film program HER Docs Film Festival 2021 (EN)

LIST OF FILMS A-Z

...and codes that break my heart. Anyway. Weronika Wysocka, Amy Muhoro (Poland / 2020 / 6’) (is love) about keeping things private Weronika Zalewska (Poland / 2021 / 4’)

$ingapura dir. Lan Yu (Singapore / 2019 / 4’)

2857 dir. Antonina Nowacka (Poland / 2020 / 22’)

93Queen dir. Paula Eiselt (USA / 2018 / 90’)

A Cat Is Always Female dir. Martina Meštrović, Tanja Vujasinovic (Croatia / 2019 / 16’)

A Few Words About Us dir. Marzena Sowa (Belgium / 2019 / 10’)

A Travelogue dir. Anna Baumgart (Poland / 2020 / 10’)

A year without summer Gosia Trajkowska, Agata Lech (Poland / 2020 / 10’)

Ahead of the Curve dir. Jen Rainin, Rivkah Beth Medow (USA / 2020 / 95’)

All Inclusive dir. Corina Schwingruber Ilić (Switzerland / 2019 / 10’)

Always Amber dir. Lia Hietala, Hannah Reinikainen (Sweden / 2020 / 75’) and died together one day dir. Pola Rader (Russia, Germany / 2021 / 9’) Ankebût dir. Ceylan Özgün Özçelik (Turkey / 2020 / 5’)

Another Europe dir. Sangam Sharma (Austria / 2020 / 55’)

Armour Off dir. Anna Rodgers (Ireland / 2020 / 14’)

As You Can See dir. Ghada Fikri (Egypt / 2019 / 8’)

Asmahan the diva dir. Chloé Mazlo (France / 2019 / 6’)

Battlefield dir. Silvia Biagioni, Andrea Laudante (Italy / 2020 / 10’)

Bay of Plenty dir. Milva Stutz (Switzerland / 2018 / 12’)

Between Us dir. Dorota Proba (Poland / 2020 / 53’)

Beyond the Visible - Hilma af Klint dir. Halina Dyrschka (Germany / 2019 / 93’)

Black&White dir. Eluned Zoë Aiano, Anna Benner (Czech Republic, Germany / 2019 / 19’)

Brazen dir. Phuong Mai Nguyen, Charlotte Cambon de Lavalette (France / 2020 / 33’)

Breakwater dir. Cris Lyra (Brazil / 2019 / 27’)

Call Me Intern dir. Nathalie Berger, Leo David Hyde (Switzerland, New Zealand / 2019 / 67’)

Cloud Forest dir. Eliane Esther Bots (Netherlands / 2020 / 18’)

Comfort dir. Weronika Banasińska (Poland / 2018 / 10’)

Delimitation dir. Tereza Vejvodová (Czech Republic / 2020 / 15’)

Delphine’s Prayers dir. Rosine Mbakam (Belgium / 2021 / 91’)

Dinosaurs and the larger issues dir. Justyna Bilik, Marta Nawrot (Poland / 2018 / 2’)

Do the dead speak to us? dir. Helena de Llanos (Spain / 2019 / 21’)

Dreamscape dir. Francesca Tesler (UK / 2020 / 8’)

Dust Karolina Breguła (Taiwan / 2019 / 22’)

Earth in the Mouth dir. Ewelina Rosińska (Germany / 2020 / 20’)

Eighteen dir. Dafne Lechuga Maroto, Laura D’Angeli, Maria Colomer Canyelles (Denmark, Italy / 2020 / 25’)

Engadin (a wanderer) Agnieszka Mastalerz (Switzerland, Poland / 2021 / 6’)

Escape Route dir. Lucija Ana Ilijić (Croatia / 2019 / 9’)

Eternal Return dir. Karolina Biedrowska (Poland / 2021 / 6’)

Finest Dust Weronika Wysocka (Poland / 2019 / 2’)

Fire dir. Ania Bajorek (Poland / 2019 / 4’)

Forget Alberto for Now dir. Beina Xu (Germany / 2020 / 19’)

Forms of Survival Diana Lelonek (Poland / 2020 / 8’)

Gentle Warriors dir. Marija Stonyté (Lithuania, Estonia / 2020 / 74’)

Hard dir. Sasha Ihnatovich, Jasmina Mustafić (Slovenia / 2019 / 6’)

In a Whisper dir. Heidi Hassan, Patricia Pérez Fernández (Spain, France, Switzerland, Cuba / 2019 / 80’)

Interspecies Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp WetMeWild (Justyna Górowska, Ewelina Jarosz) (USA / 2021 / 20’)

Intimity dir. Élodie Dermange (Switzerland / 2017 / 5’)

KNOW / KNEW / KNOWN dir. Domka Spytek (Poland / 2019 / 3’)

La Reina dir. Julia Konarska (UK / 2020 / 13’)

Lessons of Love dir. Małgorzata Goliszewska, Kasia Mateja (Poland / 2019 / 72’)

Let me in dir. Ania Płonka (Hungary / 2020 / 4’)

Let My Body Speak dir. Madonna Adib (UK, Lebanon / 2020 / 10’)

Lovemobil” dir. Elke Margarete Lehrenkrauss (Germany / 2019 / 106’)

Luca (m/f/x) dir. Hannah Schwaiger, Ricarda Funnemann (Germany / 2019 / 7’)

Lushfulness dir. Weronika Szyma (Poland / 2020 / 6’)

Maria Iwona Ogrodzka (Poland / 2019 / 22’)

Martha: A Picture Story dir. Selina Miles (USA, Australia / 2019 / 82’)

Material Bodies dir. Dorothy Allen-Pickard (UK / 2020 / 4’)

Milo dir. Nadia Szymańska (Poland / 2021 / 14’)

Mixed Race dir. Tai Linhares (Brazil, Germany / 2019 / 29’)

Morgana dir. Isabel Peppard, Josie Hess (Australia / 2019 / 71’)

Mother-Child dir. Andrea Testa (Argentina / 2019 / 66’)

Mullah’s Daughter dir. Mahdieh Mirhabibi, Hassan Solhjou (Iran, UK / 2019 / 72’)

My Fat Arse and I dir. Yelyzaveta Pysmak (Poland / 2020 / 10’)

My Vagina Labyrinth dir. BadBadMeowMeow (Taiwan / 2019 / 5’)

My Womb dir. Martina Trepczyk (Austria / 2019 / 3’)

Of water ZAKOLE (Poland / 2021 / 22’)

Once Upon a Time in Venezuela dir. Anabel Rodríguez (Venezuela, UK, Brazil, Austria / 2020 / 99’)

Papa dir. Maryia Yakimovich (Poland / 2020 / 29’)

Passage dir. Sarah Baril Gaudet (Canada / 2020 / 81’)

Primary Swarm Agnieszka Mastalerz, Michał Szaranowicz (Poland / 2018 / 17’)

Promenade dir. Delphine Bereski (France / 2020 / 17’)

Radio Silence dir. Juliana Fanjul (Switzerland, Mexico / 2019 / 78’)

Radiograph of a Family dir. Firouzeh Khosrovani (Norway, Iran, Switzerland / 2020 / 80’)

Remembrance of a Stranger dir. Helena Oborska (Poland / 2020 / 3’)

Sarha dir. Jaśmina Wójcik (Poland / 2021 / 13’)

Seyran Ateş: Sex, Revolution and Islam dir. Nefise Özkal Lorentzen (Norway / 2021 / 81’)

Silent Storm dir. Anaïs Moog (Switzerland / 2019 / 13’)

Sisters with Transistors dir. Lisa Rovner (UK / 2020 / 82’)

Stateless dir. Michèle Stephenson (USA, Canada, Dominican Republic, Haiti / 2020 / 97’)

STAY TOUCH dir. Monika Cyprian (Poland / 2020 / 4’)

Stolen Fish dir. Gosia Juszczak (UK, Poland, Spain / 2020 / 30’)

Strong sisters told the brothers Liliana Zeic (formerly Liliana Piskorska) (Poland / 2019 / 30’)

Such a Beautiful Town dir. Marta Koch (Poland / 2019 / 8’)

The Balcony and Our Dreams dir. Aylin Kuryel (Turkey / 2020 / 14’)

The Calm After the Storm dir. Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo (Colombia / 2020 / 72’)

The Case You dir. Alison Kuhn (Germany / 2020 / 80’)

The Fear dir. Pawlina Carlucci Sforza (Poland / 2020 / 28’)

The Garden Agnieszka Polska (Poland / 2010 / 11’)

The Hero’s Journey to the Third Pole - A Bipolar Musical Documentary with Elephants dir. Anní Ólafsdóttir, Andri Snær Magnason (Iceland / 2020 / 75’)

The Little Death dir. Annie Gisler (Switzerland / 2018 / 58’)

The Second Wave dir. Maria Stoianova (Ukraine / 2020 / 5’)

The Wedding Cake dir. Monica Mazzitelli (Sweden / 2020 / 4’)

Thermoplastische Elastomere dir. Karola Pfaffinger (Germany / 2019 / 7’)

They Call Me Babu dir. Sandra Beerends (Netherlands / 2019 / 80’)

Two Minutes to Midnight dir. Yael Bartana (Germany, Netherlands / 2021 / 48‘) Video Blues” dir. Emma Tusell (Spain / 2019 / 74’)

Wake Up on Mars dir. Dea Gjinovci (Switzerland, France / 2020 / 74’)

Walchensee Forever dir. Janna Ji Wonders (Germany / 2020 / 110’)

We Have One Heart dir. Katarzyna Warzecha (Poland / 2020 / 11’)

We hope you won’t need to come back dir. Anastazja Naumenko (Poland / 2020 / 9’)

Welcome to a Bright White Limbo dir. Cara Holmes (Ireland / 2019 / 11’)

Writing With Fire dir. Rintu Thomas, Sushmit Ghosh (India / 2021 / 93’)

xABo: Father Boniecki dir. Aleksandra Potoczek (Poland / 2020 / 73’) Xeno” dir. Amy J. Gardner (Canada / 2021 / 4’)

youngvodka_ dir. Léa Hall (Switzerland / 2018 / 15’)

HERstories, QueerStories

by Sylwia Chutnik

“Becoming Oneself”, well said. This phrase, however, is too often overused to conjure reality during coaching sessions. Every ad tells us to be yourself and who we really are (provided that we will buy the product in question). Every therapy explores our souls to finally get to the “true self”. But self-awareness is usually a long process that depends on what’s happening around us. Can a teenage queer from a small town and with a homophobic family really “be himself”? Will he be able to bear the consequences of this decision? And do we have the right to expect this from him? Becoming oneself is the time to ask questions. And this moment seems to be the most interesting one, as it allows us to listen to our own needs without any smarty-pants around. Even if we won´t find a clear-out answer, at least we will spend some time with ourselves and get to know ourselves better.

“Always Amber” is a story of a non-binary person in search of their identity. The protagonist considers transition and gets help from their friends and a psychologist from the clinic. After the interviews, the diagnosis indicates lack of identification with biological sex. Amber decides to have a mastectomy but gives it up after a few months, realizing that the diagnosis alone is enough. It’s like a “document for otherness”, as it accounts for the feelings that do not fit into the classical, dualistic scheme. Amber feels relieved and decides to postpone the surgery to see if it’s possible to live in their current body. To what extent can one invent oneself to feel comfortable?

Queer practises are also presented in a short film about Luca Hennig (“Luca (m/f/x)”), a genderfluid person who is flexible about their gender, depending on the situation. It can be seen, for instance, in Luca’s artistic activity, when the protagonist poses, dances and chooses their outfits. Luca looks in the mirror, tries something on – we see a moment of hesitation or a decisive gesture. The dresses (a really beautiful collection, I couldn’t take my eyes off it), the style, the hair. Luca confuses other people. Who’s that person, why is it so unclear how to perceive him/ her? Queer raises questions, it often causes perplexity. Losing track. Utopia, because, after all, as Jacek Kocha nowski wrote, it’s “a dream of a society that does not force individuals into any kind of fixed self-identifications, allowing them to freely develop the >>be yourself project<<.”

A dream can be difficult sometimes, turning into a nightmare. In “Breakwater”, a few lesbians go to the beach to party and hang out together. They compose songs, cut each other’s hair and share their experiences as activists. They talk about clashes with the police, incomprehension and the constant fight to prevent the law (which in Brazil seems to be quite liberal towards LGBT+ people) and the society from harming the ones who do not fit into the heteronorm. The body theme in the movie is also interesting: we see the protagonist sunbathing, dancing, interacting. It’s such a rare sight: hairy armpits, different skins and breasts, stretchmarks. One of the first scenes, when girls are lying on the beach and just being, is mesmerising. No, it’s not about nudity, it’s about what the culture and its rigid rules have done to us, banning body hair and all the “imperfections” from the public view.

Skintone can also be perceived as a deviation from the generally accepted norm. I like the intersectionality in the selection of films presented at the festival. It illustrates different experiences and the related issues. In “Mixed Race” we learn about the torture of the uncertainty of being neither white nor black. It turns out that we can’t just be, we are obliged to define ourselves and prove who we are. This half-fiction half-documentary tells the story of Tai who is forced to prove that she’s not white. So what is she like? She proudly wears her afro hair but her skin is not entirely black. Is there another word for her? Does it fit her true identity? The movie focuses on Brazil’s colonial past and the ambiguous race concept that not only leads to exclusion but simply does not hold any water. The film is an essay about people who don’t really belong to any category, they don’t even want to. Unfortunately, the binary system does not recognize answers other than “yes/no”.

However, things could be different. In the short animation “Bay of Plenty” we see characters who merge and change, depending on the moment. Once we are sure who they really are, they start transforming or merging with each other in such a way that we cannot guess their identity. This kaleidoscope of constant change sets us free by not providing unequivocal answers that, their uselessness apart, would be simply boring. The body is fluid, it does not follow any rules. Therefore, gender is only a drag, a disguise. It’s clearly shown by Paquita de la Torres, a Latin drag queen, resident in London. “La Reina” is a blaze of colours, a show of constantly changing ornaments and faces. All it takes is make-up and a wig and he becomes her. Sometimes it’s a long and laborious process, for example when feathers and ornaments need to be sewn onto a special bodyfit costume. The charac ter is born slowly, the transformation requires a lot of concentration and attention to details. Sometimes, howe ver, it’s madness – dancing to Prince’s music, performing on stage when emotions are circulating between the audience and the performer. A mutual exchange of what we need most: understanding, empathy and, obviously, a bit of admiration.

Fortunately, we live “at the end of something”, as Kathy Hofer, the narrator of the film “Another Europe” says. Does she mean prejudice or rather the current distribution of power in the world? Or, perhaps less optimistically, the end of all human rights? Kathy points out that growing up as a non-heteronormative person in a “straight” world is a constant struggle with the sense of shame. Even if it is triggered only once, it stays within us and ke eps accumulating over many years. That’s why “we have to keep fighting and doing it together”. Otherwise the change will not come.

But sometimes, the heroines are tired. Like in the movie “Passage”, where Gabrielle and Yoan embark on a jo urney into adulthood and conscious choices. They prefer to be in motion, just like the protagonist of “Another Europe”. They leave their homes to find fulfillment. To find themselves. They want to be who they really are, no matter what the society takes them for. Transgressing the norms, they invite us for a moment into their world so we can get closer to them and accompany them on their way to self-discovery.

BODY IN MOVEMENT

by Anna Sańczuk

This year, the body perceived as a medium to experience the reality in motion, as an archive of emotions and traumas, as a private vehicle leading us through the world of material objects and inner vibrations is the ma tron of a diverse section dedicated to contemporary choreography and dance.

Choreography, the leading art of our vibrant contemporaneity, entering with its dance steps into the domains of theatre, film, performance, sport, psychotherapy or visual art, is now more relevant than ever. Very broadly defined, it has very little in common with the classical paradigm of dance. It’s idea is closest to the simplest de finition of experiencing the “body in movement”, extremely broad and liberated from rigid expectations.

The nine films that will be shown at HER Docs Film Festival represent a great wealth of different perspectives on this field. There are both female (as “My Womb” by Martina Trepczyk, a film impression created together with a mother and dancer Anna Lis) and queer stories (as in the film “Luca (m/f/x)” by Hannah Schweiger and Ricarda Funnemann, which is a portrait of a dancer whose self-identity goes beyond the two sexes dychotomy). On the screen, you will see not only fully functional bodies but also those with chronic illnesses, like in the movie “Ar mour Off” by Anna Rodgers who captures a performance of Linda Fearon, a multiple sclerosis sufferer. Linda’s stage is her own kitchen. People with limited mobility appear also in a joyful and colorful short “Material Bodies” by Dorothy Allen Pickard, in which amputee dancers develop a close dance relationship with… their own prostheses.

There will be documentaries but also dance films closer to video art and music videos. Such a hybrid film is the wildly energetic and vital picture “Welcome to a Bright White Limbo” by Cara Holmes. The mo vie explores the creative process of Oona Doherty’s award-winning performance “Hope Hunt” (awarded the La Biennale di Venezia’s Silver Lion for dance). Oona is a revelation artist in her generation. Raised in Northern Ireland, shaken by class, political and religious conflicts, Oona reaches back in her performan ce to the violent streets of Derry and Belfast and her working class roots. The artist explores through her body the language of the masculine aggression and the feminine power, searching for strength, hidden be neath the mask of gentleness. She considers herself a dancing activist, raising up the burning contempora ry issues: homelessness, crime, racism, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, pro-choice or homosexual marriages. As she says: “Understanding oneself and empathy with others can hopefully be a catalyst for social change”.

The whole film-dance-body cosmos that you will see in this section of the festival converge around a common theme: the love for dance, movement and overcoming the body’s limitations. It encoura ges us to derive joy and creative inspiration from life, also in our own, “civilian” life. You have a body so dance!, one would like to shout while watching these movies, charged with the energy of movement.

HERstory

by Paulina Reiter, “Wysokie Obcasy”

“Is there anything else you’d like to add?” asks director Alison Kuhn at the very end of “The Case You” She asks this question to one of the five women who have just finished talking about an audition for a film in which they took part as young girls (some of them were minors). During the casting sessions, the bounda ries of their intimacy and dignity were repeatedly crossed. They were groped, sexually abused (the perpetrator put hands down their pants) and forced to undress, all of this without prior discussion and consent. But their ordeal was not over yet. A few years later they found out that footage of those auditions had been used without their consent in a documentary film that was planned to be screened at an international film festival. The women got in touch online and banded together to block the screening.

“Listen to us” is the answer to the question posed by the director. In my opinion, in this “Listen to us”, spoken by a young woman, there is a key to the world revolution. It is an invitation to change. A ticket to a world in which stories that have been untold, hidden and shrouded in silence, will finally resound. And a request for trust, which women’s stories are rarely given. Listen to us, believe us. It’s great that women who are ready to speak out, find others who are ready to listen, directors who point the camera at them and let them tell their stories. It’s so boring to live in a world of exclusively male stories. When I think back to the days when there were only men on the required-reading list, in theatres and in politics, I feel sad and angry. So many wasted stories, so many interesting and fascinating tales that have never been told.

Now is the time of herstory, which is an attempt to make the history more female-inclusive. Sometimes, this revolution is quite shocking, like when Christopher Columbus is taken down from his monument in Mexico and replaced by a statue of an indigenous woman from the Olmec tribe. Personally, I find these female stories different and captivating. They shall strike a chord not only with women but with everyone, as they tell the world in a different way. The old way, we already know it. Now it’s time for new myths, new tales, new heroines.

I want to listen to young mothers in Argentina who have had unplanned pregnancies and now they talk about their motherhood with fear and hope. And listen to those who chose to have a termination because they decided they were not ready to be a mother. And there are also those who had an abortion because, in spite of their young age, they already have a few children (“Mother-Child”).

I want to hear the story of a young woman who escaped from Cameroon to the Netherlands, although I feel great pain when I listen to her, for example when she tells that she was raped at the age of 13 and that she was selling her body to get money to pay for her niece’s treatment and then just to get something to eat. I want to hear her prayer (“Delphine’s Prayers”).

I want to understand young women who join the army, entering a man’s world where there used to be no place for women. Women are mothers and pacifists after all. I want to see their transformation, to feel their strength, to listen to their dreams (“Gentle Warriors”).

I also want to know what the life of a sex worker is really like, told honestly and without taboos.

Finally, I want to listen to stories from the past - memories of people no one paid attention to, whose narratives seemed irrelevant. Because, who was interested in what an Indonesian maid or nanny wanted to say (“They Call Me Babu”)? These are tales dug out of the past, extracted from film archives and arranged anew.

It’s so refreshing to hear and see these stories. To feel that they are important. To believe these women. And to know that we are part of a bigger story.

You have a body, so dance!

by Marta Górczyńska and Konrad Wirkowski, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights / International Film Festival WATCH DOCS

Humans have always migrated, in search of a place to live, fertile soil to cultivate or a safe shelter. Migration has been a feature of human existence for centuries as people have been constantly moving to find employ ment, to join their families, to pursue their dream. They have migrated in groups or as individuals, on foot, on horseback or by ship, with exotic goods to sell or just two hands ready to work. They carried ideas, religious and philosophical systems as well as great scientific discoveries, unknown in other parts of the world. Wandering has been an integral part of human history. Thanks to it, people have been able to populate the farthest cor ners of the world and each meeting of cultures has contributed to the development of entire communities. Then one day, borders stood in the way of migrants and passports, visas and sophisticated systems of border protection came along. Guards, walls and modern technologies, drones and night-vision devices. Obviously, it did not happen overnight. Things were changing gradually as the world was developing and the gap between rich and poor nations was widening. And, while migration has not changed its nature, our perception of it is different now. We are divided into “us” and “others”, those from here and those from far away. And then we let ourselves be fooled to believe that migration is a political issue, giving away our freedom of movement to the politicians’ hands.Somewhere along the way, we completely forgot that migration was deeply rooted in human nature. People were migrating, they are migrating and they will keep migrating. And no wall can change that.

We are lucky that, in the process of fencing off the world, we have found ourselves on the better side of the wall. We live in a relatively safe and definitely wealthier part of the world. But behind this security and pro sperity there is a long story of exploitation of the other, less fortunate hemisphere. Our responsibility begins with colonial exploitation, the export of armed conflict to other parts of the globe or the climate change driven by the dynamic development of the richest countries, and it ends with growing inequality, labour exploitation in factories relocated to poorer countries and the absorption of local farmers by multinationals. Extreme pover ty is also interconnected with wars and widespread human rights violations. And when people have no other choice, they do what they have always done in such situations: they migrate to seek a better place to live. To day, however, despite the unprecedented civilization progress that has occurred in our world, this journey is more dangerous than ever. After all, there are wire entanglements and dangerous waters patrolled by even more dangerous coast guards. There are walls, too, including the most terrifying ones: the walls of indifference. It is the indifference of the ones living in the richer part of this world to the suffering of those who were forced by life’s circumstances to abandon their homes and families in search of a safe haven. The heartless system of borders, walls and wire entanglements, coupled with the securitisation of the migration policies, is very close to us today.

For several months now, the hitherto peaceful Polish-Belarusian border region has been witness to the drama of people being taken advantage of in the political game between the two neighbours. People are being taken into the forest at night and left there to the mercy of fate and wild animals. Freezing, hungry and terrified, they keep wandering between Poland and Belarus, being turned by the border services of both countries onto the neighbour’s side. Some of them die. Both their wandering and the fence erected on their path have a symbo lic dimension. The migrants call our attention. Our reaction to what is happening now in the Polish-Belarusian forests shapes our reality. And it will ultimately determine the shape of the world we will live in.

The documentary films have a unique ability to bring viewers closer to the areas that at first glance seem to be distant, detached or incomprehensible. Watching documentaries helps us discover white spots on our personal maps of the world. As a result, it makes it easier for us to perceive the plight of people, far beyond our imagina tion, that is hidden behind the veil of the “migration problem” phrase, fabricated by the media and politicians.

The female protagonist of the shocking “Delphine’s Prayers”, despite years spent in exile, is still unable to escape the demons of the past and break out of the vicious circle of violence and domination. Based on long close-ups, the documentary makes us feel that we are participating in an important and intimate conversation. There are many ways to make a treacherous journey from South to North. Even though, as “Silent Storm” reminds us, this route has claimed an unimaginable number of victims, the refugee’s life is most of all a constant waiting game (“Forget Alberto for Now”).

There are many different reasons why people decide to flee. We often forget that reaching Europe is not only the end of the most hazardous part of the journey but also the beginning of the arduous road to legalization of stay. During this process, which usually lasts many years, migrants experience social isolation: locked up in special centres, without work permits, they wait for a decision which may change their fate. Children are the worst af fected by stress and insecurity – that’s the case of the “Wake Up on Mars” protagonists who, unable to bear this state of limbo, fall into a coma-like lethargy. It is as if their tormented bodies refused to continue participating in this inhuman process.

Big issues are not easy to decide on. Therefore, let’s forget about big politics for a moment and focus instead on what is the most important thing: the human being. The HER Docs Film Festival provides a good opportunity for it. The films presented during the festival show migration for what it really is: an individual story of an individual. These are stories about someone’s son, someone’s mother, someone’s brother. About someone like us, only on the move. A wanderer. An exile. A refugee. These are stories about people searching for what we are all entitled to: a good life.

REINVENTING TOMORROW

A better tomorrow, a question mark

by Klara Cykorz

A starting point of Yael Bertana’s fantasy “Two Minutes to Midnight” is a trigger question: what if women ruled the world? The film is the synthesis of a multidisciplinary project, lasting several years and com bining a theatre performance and a conference with a kind of a play or even a joke. The actresses who play the members of the all-female government meet a panel of real experts on stage. Within a fictitious, exaggerated story frame we watch an authentic exchange of opinions, as the border between fiction and re ality becomes blurred (the film uses footage from performances in Aarhus, Berlin and Philadelphia). But thin gs get interesting when the utopian promise, hidden behind the initial question (yeah, of course the world would be a better place to live in) is confronted with a fundamental difference of opinion among the attendees.

The female (and male) protagonists of the other films of the Reinventing Tomorrow section do not sit, however, at government tables. Yes, sometimes they are public and recognizable figures, like the Turkish-German female imam Seyran Ateş (“Seyran Ateş. Sex, Revolution and Islam”) or the Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui (“Ra dio Silence”). Sometimes, they are important members of their local communities, like Rachel Freier in Hasi

dic Brooklyn (“93Queen”) or de facto animators of a minority (in this case lesbian) culture, like Frances „Franco” Stevens (“Ahead of the Curve”). Sometimes, they hit the headlines for a day, like the protagonists of “Call Me Intern” who became accidental activists, almost by the force of momentum, when they were spat out (some times literally) into the streets by the scourge of unpaid internships. Occasionally, they are almost anonymous individuals who do the painstaking (and extremely hard) grassroots work. Their social or political activism may have different forms but what all these figures have in common is a struggle spanning over years, perhaps even decades.

Elections can be considered one of the recurring themes of the section, as among the protagonists we have some determined female candidates (the aforementioned Rachel Freier, as well as lawyer Rosa Iris Diendomi -Álvarez in “Stateless”) and election campaigns are an important thread of the film “Writing With Fire” and probably even more so in “Once Upon a Time in Venezuela”. But if I were to pick the most important leit motif of the series, it would be the media and the questions raised about contemporary journalism. Three very different films make up an informal trilogy of female journalists’ portraits. In “Radio Silence” it will be the afore mentioned Carmen Aristegui and her dramatic situation after being unlawfully fired from a radio station in 2015. Her story is firmly set in the context of the political scandals in Mexico in the middle of the decade. “Writing With Fire” focuses primarily on the story of the newspaper “Khabar Lahariya” and its editorial board, composed exclusively of women and, what’s more, women from the lowest caste, without social capital, originating from the provinces. The film shows the humble and very local beginnings of the newspaper as well as its to day’s struggle against the backdrop of unravelling Hindu nationalism and deepening social inequalities. These are stories about believing in and fighting for the public’s right to information as well as about committed investi gative journalism in countries, where politically motivated murders of journalists are still part of the dramatic social landscape. These are stories about freedom of speech understood as hard work in support of those who se voice is less, insufficiently or not heard at all. Journalism, conceived as emancipation for both the editors or authors and their readers, is also the subject of “Ahead of the Curve”. In this case, though, it’s an emancipation for pleasure. Founded by Franco Stevens, “Deneuve” (later renamed “Curve”) was political not only because it had good texts, it was political because it was an attractive, colour magazine, a manifestation of lesbian fun and pleasure.

In virtually every film, the heroines (and heroes) are fighting a colossal opponent, systemic, entrenched problems whose origins can sometimes be traced back through centuries. These are economic and state vio lence, media propaganda in the hands of corrupt politicians (if not simply dictators), religious institutions unwilling to change, and, finally, global machines of exploitation. However, what I find most interesting are smaller-scale disputes: specifically, disputes between women themselves. After all, the charismatic Seyran Ateş is not the voice of all Berlin Muslim women: at the beginning of the film, she takes part in a lawsuit, taking side of the local law that bans women from wearing hijabs in public primary schools. Consequently, she stands against another woman who challenges this law as discriminatory, which makes Seyran a highly ambiguous character.

On the other hand, “Ahead of the Curve”, on the other hand, attempts to map intergenerational differen ces in the queer community - new languages, new thinking about media, emerging tensions, experien ces previously unseen in the mainstream, including in terms of race and class. And finally, “Stateless”, weaves together two parallel stories on two sides of the political - and personal - spectrum. Rosa Iris Diendomi-Álva rez is a progressive lawyer, working on behalf of Dominicans of Haitian ancestry who were stripped of their citizenship by the government in 2013; her family is also affected. So she shuttles between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, runs for election, and supports her loved ones. On the other side, her complete oppo site: Gladys Feliz-Pimentel, an activist of the Dominican National Movement, a woman both indignant (at the Haitian “others”) and pleased (with herself), an inexhaustible source of energy and racist thoughts, always ready to prove that there is no discrimination in the Republic, simply that “they” belong “there”. And that’s it.

However, these films carry a dialectical energy of constant struggle: there’s always some way to expand our freedom and to extort something from the injustice. And if there is one film that stands in complete contrast to the section’s title - or simply puts it in ironic quotation marks - it is paradoxically the funniest one: “Once Upon a Time in Venezuela”. Specifically, in Congo Mirador, a village on Lake Maracaibo, situated by the largest oil fields in the world. The houses stand on stilts protruding from the water, which the camera is almost overwhelmed by; the frames almost smell of moisture. And here we have the developing conflict between two women: a young teacher, Natalie, and a self-proclaimed party bigwig, Tamara, who lives in Hugo Chávez’s most genuine sanctuary. This is a film about a country two minutes away from collapse and a huma nitarian crisis, about a worse tomorrow for an expressive local community, full of eccentric human types, now doomed to disintegration and migration.

FAMILY ALBUM

by Anna Tatarska

Family? It’s obvious – it is the first and most vital cell of society. Everyone has heard it at least once. A cliché, a truism. But what exactly does this cell look like? Is it healthy? Or is it made up of abnormal tissue?

Family is a much broader term than a dictionary definition would suggest. When we hear it, our first reaction is to think about what family means to us. Did we grow up with both parents or just one? Were we raised by biologi cal or adoptive parents, of both sexes or maybe one? Was our family large or small? Or maybe we had no parents and we were brought up by our grandparents or by those we consciously chose as family for ourselves? Perhaps we will decide to start our own family, too. We will have children, dogs or plants, a relationship with a partner or partners.

Internal relationship dynamics, inherited trauma, unhealed wounds, unspoken grievances. Blood ties as the source of arbitrary, innate bonds. And the greatest mystery: the mystery of love. No wonder that the family has always been at the centre of interest of both male and female filmmakers. In the new section of HER Docs Film Festival, “Family Album”, the female directors tackle their own, multi-faceted family stories. The section includes five feature-length and six short films.

In “Video Blues” the director Emma Tussel reviews recordings from home cameras. First, the ones from the 1980s, recorded on videotapes, then the videos captured on her first Super8, and finally the contemporary ones, shot with her phone camera. Among the innocent shots of childhood, family parties and foreign trips, she picks out the turning points - the father’s last words, the mother’s decision to stop chemotherapy, the baby’s first babbling. It’s an intimate picture that slowly gathers together scattered fragments into a whole.

“Walchensee Forever” by Janna Ji Wonders is also a form of family chronicle. In 1920, the doyenne of the family, Apa, establishes a café by the picturesque Lake Walchen in Bavaria. Her great-granddaughter Janna uses the vast archive material of the last century, trying to find answers to the questions she is burdened with: issues of belon ging, roots and fate. Attitudes towards femininity change from generation to generation, the protagonists search for identity in the furthest corners of the world, but they always return to the wrinkled, grey-blue waters of the Walchensee.

The author of “The Calm After the Storm” is a young Colombian director, Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo. As a daughter of a well-known director, she explores her parents’ relationship, in which the rhythm was set by her mother’s withdrawal and her father’s decisive voice. She also takes a broader look: while trying to break away from the traumas of adolescence and toxic family patterns, she also dissociates herself from patriarchal narratives and the division of roles that have defined Latin American cinema in the past.

Director Mahdieh Mirhabibi’s father is a conservative mullah. She is a photographer but due to political restrictions, the government banned her from working. For this reason, she’s planning to escape from the country but she has to keep it a secret from her father. “Mullah’s Daughter” captures the clash of worldviews in a loving but conflicted home. This conflict becomes the fascinating centre of the story as the micro portrait of an Iranian family becomes imperceptibly a miniature representation of contemporary Iran.

Iran is also the background in “Radiograph of a Family”, a feature-length debut of Firouzeh Khosrovani. A father who loves western freedom and culture and a devout mother who will never see in Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” anything more than a sin. Evenings with music and wine are replaced by prayer rugs and a silent judgement. The artist constructs a visually intriguing, tender, but also sorrowful image of the rupture that defined her family, and thus herself.

The short films included in “Family Album” are equally dense and unobvious. Pola Rader replaces the slogan “and they lived happily ever after” with “and died together one day”. The central theme of this experimental Russian -German short is the relationship of the author’s parents, reunited after a divorce. In the Polish short film “Papa”, Maryia Yakimovich reflects on her problematic relationship with her father, whose mental illness was always a ta boo subject and explores the impact it had on her life.

“Escape Route” by Lucija Ana Ilijić picks up the pace of the laps that the author, a former speed skater, has comple ted thousands of over the years. During the workouts, she was always accompanied by her father. Marzena Sowa’s “A Few Words About Us” shows a cartoon-like experience of a Polish woman living in Belgium. It’s a raw, bitter sweet and at times funny film about the death of her mother and the chaos of mourning and complex emotions. The poetic “As You Can See” by Ghada Fakri searches for answers to key questions in deep furrows on the worn -out hands of the author’s mother. “The Second Wave” by Maria Stoianova, the only pandemic film in the section, focuses on the director’s relationship with her grandfather. The memories, the past and the future find a common space in the water.

The family grows and evolves. It develops and redefines itself. It soothes, it supports, it inspires. It hurts, it pulls down, it fails. Even when we manage to cut it off, there are moments when it returns uninvited, shattering the or der that has been elaborately rebuilt. It leaves a mark. Its absence, however, can also be a reference point. Some times, its disappearance can be the beginning, perhaps even the only possible one. The filmmakers whose films have been selected for the “Family Album” section know it - and see it.

ART

All cloudy except a narrow opening at the bottom of the sky

by Bogna Stefańska, Weronika Zalewska

The screenings of video artworks within the Art section at the HER Docs Film Festival are an experiment: it’s an attempt to see what will happen when we show the works of female artists on a cinema screen.

In this year’s edition, starting from the experience of pandemic and isolation that has taken its toll on our mental health, sense of community, mutual trust and questioned our hopes for the future, we look for a way out of the tunnel, all cloudy except a narrow opening at the bottom of the sky. Just like the protagonists of the poems of Lisa Robertson; 19th century authors of confessional diaries and observers of weather changes who managed to nurture everyday poetry in their productive activities.

We try to imagine a speculative vision of the future that already begins here and now. The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed, as William Gibson, the author of “Neuromancer” once said. But can we imagi ne a future that is based on values such as reciprocity, compassion, co-existence? A future, in which we nurture attentiveness to other species but also mourn those who have left us? If not, we will probably end up immersed in nostalgia, longing for the good, old days to escape from the terrifying now (in which our data have never belonged to us, relationships with others are based on fear and material reality is dismantled by the developers, carrying out another ‘urban revitalisation project’). As the artists show us, a good future is more about getting in tune with localism and redesigning the notion of community. Turning full circle to remind ourselves about the basic values is only a seemingly surprising futurological exercise.

Answers to questions about the future are sought by: Karolina Breguła, Justyna Górowska, Ewelina Jarosz, Agata Lech, Diana Lelonek, Agnieszka Mastalerz, Amy Muhoro, Iwona Ogrodzka, Agnieszka Polska, Michał Szaranowicz, Gosia Trajkowska, Weronika Wysocka, Liliana Zeic, Weronika Zalewska, ZAKOLE.

Curators: Bogna Stefańska, Weronika Zalewska.

Within the Art section, we are looking to the future but also returning to the past and recalling, in feature-length format, some outstanding artists and pioneers in their fields: the figure of Hilma af Klint, an abstract painter (“Beyond the Visible - Hilma af Klint”, dir. Halina Dyrschka), Martha Cooper, a photojournalist, documen ting graffiti art (“Martha: A Picture Story”, dir. Selina Miles), a Croatian sculptor Marija Ujević Galetović (“A Cat Is Always Female”, dir. Martina Meštrović, Tanja Vujasinovic), the female pioneers of electronic mu sic (“Sisters with Transistors”, dir. Lisa Rovner). We will also present a short film about disproportionate repre sentation of male and female figures in the world of design (“KNOW / KNEW / KNOWN”, dir. Domka Spytek).

BODY

By: Aleksandra Nowak, G’rls ROOM

The iconic poster by American artist and activist Barbara Kruger reads “Your Body is a Battleground”. Although the artwork was created in the late 80s, our bodies are still battlegrounds, as best illustrated by the disputes over reproductive rights. The body, appropriated by politics, ideology and religion, is still at the centre of various con flicts. This is one of the themes explored by female filmmakers whose works will be presented during the second edition of HER Docs Film Festival. But there will be more of them. The directors and artists talk about the body as a source of feelings, including pleasure and as a place where the memories are stored, a map of our life journey. They perceive the exploration of our corporeality and sexuality as a way to get to know ourselves better, to befriend our own emotions. But it’s also about playing with cultural codes, exposing gender stereotypes, escaping from the oppressive, tight rules and putting our needs and desires first.

Above all, the authors of the films presented in this section speak out in a very personal way about what’s empha sized also by the modern theorists of feminism: we are our bodies. The body cannot be reduced to a shell that ne eds to conform to unrealistic beauty standards nor to a perfect working, reproducing or killing machine. Too often, the body becomes a tool in a system, like capitalism, patriarchy or ideology. However, it cannot be separated from feeling and experiencing, at least not forever. Sooner or later the body will rebel anyway. And therein lies the eman cipatory potential: in valuing the corporeality, in dismantling the old dichotomy of body and mind, in liberating the female sexuality from the mechanisms of slut-shaming and objectification, in following the body’s needs, memory and erotic fantasies. And this is definitely done by the directors whose films are presented in the BODY section, though each author has her own, unique way. In their works, the carnality, for centuries treated as inferior and sin ful, is put on pedestal and the protagonists who explore their bodies gain full subjectivity.

In the subsection BODYPLEASURE we have a chance to take a closer look at women who gain the courage to explore their sexuality. In the documentary “Morgana” we witness the transformation of the protagonist who de cides to leave behind her unsuccessful marriage, traumatic experiences and stereotyped rules for being a woman and a good mother and wife. Morgana follows a path of self-discovery in which opening up to erotic experiences plays a key role. She starts directing porn films in which you won’t see the perfect, smooth and young bodies. Instead, there’s openness to body diversity and exploring the fantasies that, according to the society, mature women should have long forgotten (providing that they had ever allowed themselves to have any). On the other hand, the film “The Little Death” is an account of several women who befriended their sexuality and discovered the possibilities that our body offers and we know so little about, due to the lack of solid sexual education. The latter should not only focus on the risk of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases but also celebrate carnal pleasure. Annie Gisler shows the negative impact of cultural patterns on women’s experience of their sexu ality but she does not limit herself to criticism and constant woeing over the present situation. She convinces us that orgasm is something worth fighting for. She sees sexuality as a powerful force and its recognition as a necessary condition for widespread social change.

The subsection BODY AS BATTLEFIELD, in turn, refers to the already mentioned approach to body as a battlefield. Simone de Beauvoir warned not to forget that it only takes a political, economic or religious crisis for women’s rights to be called into question. She advised women to remain vigilant throughout their lives. In recent years, in response to the conservative upsurge and the attempts to restrict women’s and sexual minorities’ rights in different parts of the world, dozens of banners with the slogan “I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit” or its variations have appeared on the streets, in Washington and Paris, Buenos Aires, Madrid and Seoul as well as in Polish, Pakistani and Irish towns. Our rights remain under attack. A striking example is the sudden change of women’s situation in Afghanistan after the recent Taliban takeover. This is a good moment to have a look at the authors’ works, exploring different aspects of the struggle for women’s subjectivity.

Silvia Biagioni and Andrea Laudante (“Battlefield”) pay tribute to Italian feminists of the second wave. Their film is a series of evocative, hypnotic images in black and white, taken from archival materials. The visual form of collage reinforced by a voiceover reading a strikingly relevant poem written by an unknown woman, blurs the distance between past and present. Time relations are also of interest to Madonna Adib (“Let My Body Speak”), a director who explores the memory of the body. The documentary is a record of an intimate journey into the depths of me mories that lead us to Damascus in the late 80s and early 90s when the city was afflicted by a growing political repression. Adib juxtaposes materials from her family archives with the current footage in which she lets her body tell the story – after all, it’s her body that absorbed the pain of the past.

On the other hand, Eluned Zoë Aiano’s documentary (“Black&White”) reminds us that in a state of war, the body is used as weapon but what we consider as patriotic fight is heavily influenced by a variety of mental patterns, including gender norms. How many war heroes do we remember? And how many war heroines? How exactly do we define the heroism and what patterns affect our unconscious perceptions? Aiano brings up all these questions, telling the story of a girl from a small Czechoslovakian town who supposedly fought the Nazis, using her sexuali ty as a weapon. And these are just a few films you can see in the subsection BODY AS A BATTLEFIELD, exploring different perspectives on the relationship between corporeality and battlefield.

In the subsection ANIMATIONS ON BODY & SEXUALITY the works of Polish and foreign authors will be presen ted and one of the main themes, addressed by several animations, will be the problem of girls’ self-acceptance. It’s a huge challenge in reality that keeps bombarding us with images and messages pushing everybody to chase the ideal of the perfect body. Nevertheless, the protagonists manage to come to terms with themselves and their bodies, gradually discovering their corporeality, with growing interest, ease and openness. Sometimes it’s a journey to regain oneself, as in “My Fat Arse and I” by Yelyzaveta Pysmak, sometimes it’s just about the pleasure as in “My Vagina Labyrinth” by BadBadMeowMeow, which is an animation with an old video game style. At other times, the journey may be the exploration of various forms of corporeality, opening up to transgender and non-bi nary, playing with gender codes, blurring the boundaries between human and animal form as in a posthumanist movie “Bay of Plenty”, directed by Milva Stutz. THE BODY will thus reveal a whole spectrum of stories, perspectives and experiences, drawing our attention towards challenges, issues and socio-political transformations seen through the eyes of women.

SWITZERLAND DIFFERENT THAN YOU THINK

by Aleksandra Stelmach

It’s 1970 and Carole Roussopoulos, Swiss filmmaker and feminist, known to the viewers of HER Docs Film Festival as the director of “Delphine and Carole”, presented last year at the festival, is the first woman in France to pur chase a video camera. A year later (yes, yes…) she and her female compatriots are finally granted voting rights, as a result of a referendum... In the same tumultuous decade, Swiss women founded CH-Filmfrauen, an informal group of mutually supportive female filmmakers thus far overlooked in the public discourse as well as the Insoumuses collective, documenting the fight for women’s rights. Their mission is now continued by the Swiss Women’s Audiovisual Network (SWAN), an association established in 2018, aimed at reducing glaring inequalities in the funding allocation to women (in 2019 only 20% of Swiss films were made by women).

Women’s activist and feminist documentary has a long, rich and powerful tradition in Switzerland, although the names connected with it rarely appear in cinemas or TV (which, by the way, is the medium that the Swiss documentary originated from) or theatres. The brightest stars of this constellation are, apart from Roussopoulos, Jacqueline Veuve, Léa Pool, Tula Roy, Gertrud Pinkus, and Lucienne Lanaz. All of them are pioneers, focusing on the women’s experience, immortalizing the struggle for women’s rights and following political and social movements in Europe or in the USA. They speak out against taboos, stereotyping and the domination of heteronormativity. To put it shortly: they look at Switzerland through a feminist lens.

In Poland, we know little or nothing about these Swiss pioneers. But, actually, the term/slogan “Swiss cinema” in itself does not evoke many associations. If Switzerland is not exactly what we think, then what do we actu ally imagine it to be? Perhaps we hope for a country flowing with milk from purple cows and with gold that certainly doesn’t come from semi-legal trade in raw materials. We imagine a home to human rights, a country without a fascist past where refugees are not accommodated in underground bunkers or threatened with depor tation (including third-generation immigrants). We believe it’s the ideal of grassroots democracy, where the pay

gap is not 20%, some women didn’t have to wait for voting rights until 1990 and the culture does not risk losing state subsidies because of one referendum. Maybe.

Contemporary documentaries help us to burst the bubble and get rid of such illusions but Switzerland is still hard to put a label on: just as it has no coherent national identity, there is no single definition of its cinema. In a country of 4 languages and dozens of dialects, divided into 26 independent cantons with their own and often conflicting, traditions and interests, the cinema – as a derivative of social phenomena – is torn between introspection and looking over the horizon, between exploring the safe Heimat and exposing its fragility in the relationship with the Other.

Consequently, even though this year’s selection for the HER Docs Film Festival does not include films that directly invite us to enter this utopianly picturesque land, we will see films seemingly telling about other worlds. The selec ted titles focus like a lens on the country’s burning problems, allowing its inhabitants to see themselves in a safe but not always beautifying mirror. The authors presented at the festival are following in the footsteps of their illu strious predecessors: seeking a broader horizon for themselves and offering the viewers a chance to confront their own boundaries. They travel to other countries and continents, explore social recesses, pose questions about global crises of the 21st century and break taboos related to psychology and sexuality. But above all, they weave intimate stories for which Switzerland, in its complexity, is the perfect reference point.

NEW FACES

The tales of the new faces

by Anna Snopkowska, Natalia Oumedjebeur, Oliwia Zając, Kacper Wojtczak, Julia Jaworska

HER Docs Film Festival is an event dedicated to the documentary works of female film authors. This year’s edition will begin on 22th October and one of its sections will be “New Faces”, presenting to the audience young, talented documentary female filmmakers and animators.

In the “New Faces” section we will be able to see as many as 18 extremely important and relevant films, both short and feature-length. The first category includes two pictures: “Between Us” (dir. Dorota Proba, Poland, 2020, 53’) and “xABo: Father Boniecki” (dir. Aleksandra Potoczek, Poland, 2020, 73’).

Commotion of mouths and hearts

“Simplicity” is the word that immediately comes to mind after watching “Between Us” and it refers to both form and concept. The director Dorota Proba invited to this project three couples, which differ in terms of their age, experience and relationship duration. Each couple answers the questions regarding their relationship. They talk about the partner’s qualities they appreciate most, they share their first-time meeting memories, they´re asked if they have any break-up thoughts. These answers, though, are just a starting point for an open and honest discussion of the relationship and its prospects. In spite of the fact that the couples are discussing some difficult moments and hard times they went through together, there is a lot of warmth and humour radiating from the screen. The relationships are entirely different yet there’s something universal about them and many spectators will see their own relationships reflected in the protagonists’ stories.

“Between Us” is the directorial debut of Dorota Proba who formerly worked mostly as a set designer. She colla borated with Polish National Opera and Dramatyczny Theater. For 5 years, together with her sister, she has been creating music videos, documentaries and reportages.

“xABo: Father Boniecki” is not another biography. Aleksandra Potoczek’s documentary gives a voice to a person who has been ordered into silence. Priest Adam Boniecki has been absent from the media for 10 years. The Ma rians Order he belongs to does not allow him to speak in public. There are two reasons for it: Boniecki has been silenced for the first time when he objected to the discrimination of the LGBT community and for the second time when he claimed that suicide might not be an unforgiven sin. Even though the camera follows Boniecki in the editorial office and when he’s discussing the topics that brought a gag on him, the movie is neither a controver sial nor religious documentary. It seems to be a kind of a road movie. It’s about the road or rather a highway that the protagonist takes, going to the rescue of the ones in need. He gets onto a train a bus or a tram for his author’s meetings but also for some platform’s meetings. He meets people in need everywhere. He helps both believers and atheists and, above all, the ones that have been excluded. Every step he takes is motivated by the urge to help others. If it wasn’t for Boniecki’s cassock, you could take him for a psychotherapist. That’s probably why his conversation with the professor Bogdan de Barbaro seems to be a true kindred spirits’ meeting. Another of Boniecki’s compelling interlocutors is sister Małgorzata Chmielewska. The documented conversations with the censored priest enable us to know the beliefs of this colourful though black cassock-clad character.

Worldview related topics address the issues facing the Church today (e.g. celibacy, paedophilia, hypocritical mercantilism). There is also some philosophical wisdom, dispensed by the priest with a pinch of salt. Neverthe less, Adam Palenta´s amazing cinematography put the viewers in a deeply reflective mood. The last frame and its contestative message sweep you off your feet.

The author is a graduate from Jagiellonian University, Lodz Film School and Wajda School, documentary direc tor and cinematographer at TVN. She was awarded with Phil Epistemoni’s prize for science popularization. Alek sandra is the author of 4 films, including the notorious “Voyage Voyage” (rewarded with Silver Dolphin in Cannes and Intermedia-Globe Silver in Hamburg). „xABo: Father Boniecki” received Maciej Szumowski’s Award at Krakow Film Festival 2020.

Emotions caught in a moment

Let’s move on from the longest films to the shortest ones. These are three film studies not exceeding 4 minutes: “Dinosaurs and the larger issues” (dir. Justyna Bilik, Marta Nawrot, prod. Poland, 2018, 2’) “Let me in” (dir. Ania Płonka, prod. Hungary, 2020, 4’) and “Remembrance of a Stranger” (dir. Helena Oborska, prod. Poland, 2020, 3’). If we were to look for a single common denominator, it would be an important and up-to-date theme. In spite of the films’ short form, they’re all packed with content and emotions.

“Dinosaurs and the larger issues” refers directly to the poem of the same title, written by Irena Klepfisz, a Jewish poet, lesbian and feminist. In the poem, the author compares lesbian sex to two dinosaurs rubbing their necks. The movie is about the relationship and intimacy between two women, but also about coming out.

In “Let me in” the film’s script was written last summer and you may get the impression that the film is a commentary to what has been happening recently in Poland. The protagonist’s desire is to be let into a mystery house as it’s the only place where he can find freedom and happiness.

“Remembrance of a Stranger” is a story of a woman who struggles with the echoes of her past while trying to both forget and remember what happened.

All of the films mentioned above were directed by young generation authors. Justyna Bilik is a director and the author of several scripts written for school film studies. She has a degree in screenwriting, obtained at the Lodz Film School. Marta Nawrot, the author of 3D visualisations in “Dinosaurs and the larger issues”, specialises in design and new media. She’s also a co-founder of the Pussymantra collective and an inde pendent publishing house CyberPussy, focused on cyber- and xenofeminist digital art creation.

Helena Oborska graduated from the faculty of Direction at the Lodz Film School. Her best-known film is the “Bitten”, awarded with second prize at the Krakow Film Festival in 2019.

Ania Płonka is a graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and Warsaw Film School (Direction). Her arti stic activity includes mainly new media, video art and music. She’s also a member of a female group 8 zł.

Everything remains in the family

In the “New Faces” section we can also find 3 films dedicated to family and close relationships: “We Have One Heart” (dir. Katarzyna Warzecha, Poland, 2020, 11’), “Milo” (dir. Nadia Szymańska, Poland, 2021, 16’) and “Papa” (dir. Maryia Yakimovich, Poland, 2020, 29’).

“We Have One Heart” is a dextrous juxtaposition of animated drawings and archival material that tells the love story of Halina, a Pole and Farouk, a Kurd living in Iraq. Their son, Adam, comes across some letters exchanged between his parents 40 years ago. Adam never knew his father and was convinced that he was killed in the war.

Katarzyna Warzecha is a director of documentary and feature films and a former programmer at the Gdansk DocFilm Festival. “We Have One Heart” is an unusually moving story about root search and uncovering extraordi nary family secrets, narrated by a little boy, Halina´s and Farouk’s grandson.

The film “Milo” is directed by Nadia Szymańska, who is also a cinematographer and set designer.

The documentary is a collection of intimate frames, telling the story of single motherhood’s struggles. A young woman and her son live in a caravan by the Polish sea, at a resort known for entertainment. The film shows a lot of difficult moments in the young mother’s life. The audience sees Milo and his mom spending time together, going out frequently and trying to balance their time alone and their time together. It’s not an idealistic story about a young mom who gives up on everything and completely loses herself in motherhood. Actually, it’s quite the contrary. The viewers witness the moments when the family tries to balance the needs of the mother and the child, spending time at an amusement park or inviting friends for a late night barbecue. It is an interesting documentary showing different approaches to motherhood without sugarcoating it.

“Papa” is a graduation autobiographical documentary, a sort of diary of the author’s memories. Maryia Yakimo vich, born in Minsk and a graduate of a local Art Lyceum and the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts, tells a story of her childhood, spent in the shadow of her father’s mental illness. On the screen, we see the flow of the archival photos, arranged in emotionally moving collages. After many years, the author tries to rebuild herself and break the long silence about “papa’s” illness. It gives her a chance for developing a new relationship with her dad and expressing her true feelings.

Echoes of memories

Searching for the roots or one’s own identity is not limited to ancestry research and working on family relationships. Although everyday we look into the future with hope, it’s the present and the past that really shape us.

Seemingly detached pictures of the film “Earth in the Mouth” (dir. Ewelina Rosińska, Germany, 2020, 20’), create a sequence documenting the director’s identity. The film combines various shots related to patriotism, religion, nature and everyday life. Ewelina Rosińska, a graduate from Film Production and Direction at Deutsche Film und Fernsehakademie in Berlin, takes us on a journey to the shreds of memories and plans for the future.

In “The Fear” (dir. Pawlina Carlucci Sforza, Poland, 2020, 28’) we watch wrinkled faces of old people who witnessed horrifying events that took place shortly after the end of IIWW in the Dębrzyna forest (Podkarpacie region). Polish slave labourers, returning from Germany, were murdered by their compatriots, swelling the ranks of those “missing during war”. There has been a conspiracy of silence for 70 years and the identity of perpetrators is still concealed. In contrast to the witnesses’ stories, every now and then, the camera shows archive footage of smiling people returning from Germany and jumping off the trains, longing for their homeland and families. “The Fear” is the second film of Pawlina Carlucci Sforza, director and set designer, award-winner for the Best Documentary (“Nie sądzić”) at Grand Off 2017 festival.

Road movie

The memories and the search for one’s own identity are also associated with a journey, in its broadest sense. Sometimes, the most interesting trip is a journey inside yourself. The film’s “Comfort” (Poland, 2018, 10’) director is Weronika Banasińska, who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. Currently, she’s an illustrator and animator who, in an extraordinary way, is able to take us back to places we have long forgotten. “Comfort” is a mixture of emotions – from excitement to anxiety.

A journey, however, is most of all discovering distant places, as in the documentary “Sarha” (Poland, 2021, 13’) directed by Jaśmina Wójcik. Two little girls tell us about their trip to Palestine. The director is a Polish activist and artist who tries to combine these two fields, creating socially engaged art. In “Sarha” the main narrative axis is based on the children’s comments. The girls definitely like Palestine, it’s colourful, interesting and coherent. Zoja and Lea sum up the conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians in a very simple way: it’s all about taking the other’s land. For the girls, the essence of the conflict is completely pointless. Palestine is a beautiful place with nice people and the aggression is groundless and focused on conquest only, with disregard for people and places. The film has an interestingly composed plot and a light-hearted form. Thanks to the young protagonists, “Sarha” addresses important and up-to-day issues in a non-obvious way.

A journey may also mean emigration and all the challenges it brings. “We hope you won’t need to come back” (dir. Anastazja Naumenko, Poland, 2020, 9’) tells a story of a young girl who departures to a foreign country and soon discovers that the new reality cannot compensate for the loved ones and a sense of security she longs for. Anastazja Naumenko, a graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, shows a completely new perspective on modern emigration.

From head to toe

Already mentioned self-discovery and the process of getting to know oneself, probably means the necessity to stand in front of the mirror and accept one’s physical appearance. In the “New Faces” section we will present two documentaries addressing the themes of body and corporeality.

In the movie “My Fat Arse and I” (dir. Yelyzaveta Pysmak, Poland, 2020, 11’) a young girl decides to go on a strict diet that leads her to extreme emaciation. Along with the fat, she loses all the joy of life. Yelyzaveta Pysmak takes an interesting approach to the topic of self-acceptance in terms of one’s weight and physical appearance. Total self-love can only be achieved by reconciling with the past.

Discovering one’s carnality usually happens in solitude. That’s also the case in the film “Lushfulness” (Poland, 2020, 6’) by Weronika Szyma, a third-year animation student at the Lodz Film School. Her directorial debut, “Bies i kat” was awarded the first prize of the Animation Competition during the Ars Independent festival and the author does not cease to surprise with the associations and shapes used in her productions. The prota gonist of “Lushfulness” undresses in front of the mirror. Her hands start to wander over her body, first hesitantly, then more and more boldly. The woman’s erotic play is shown by means of contours, delicate colours and lines, creating a sublime image of experimentation with her sexual self.

On the trail of the modern world’s problems

The problems of the modern world can be listed endlessly, but today the major issues seem to be the following: pandemic, exploitation and drugs. The Covid-19 pandemic may seem to be the end of the world for some people but isn’t it actually just a minor event in the human history cycle? Karolina Biedrowska in her film “Eternal Return” (Poland, 2021, 6’) shows the repeatability of events and the ordinary fluidity of life.

Gosia Juszczak, the director of “Stolen Fish” (Poland, Great Britain, 2020, 30’) is a versatile author whose areas of professional activity include film direction, translation and human rights. Her documentary was made in Gambia, a small country in West Africa. For Gambians, fish was once a staple food and a key to the local economy, provi ding many workplaces. Gosia Juszczak’s film gives us insight into the problems of Gunjur’s inhabitants. Chinese fishmeal factories deprive the local people of food and livelihood. Chinese fishing vessels collect huge fish containers to process it into fishmeal, used as food for livestock in industrial farms in other parts of the world. There’s almost nothing left for the Gambians. Neocolonialism and unethical Chinese business are the devastating reality of the Gambian people.

“Such a Beautiful Town” (Poland, 2019, 8’) is a short story of a woman who notices her partner kissing another woman in the street. Upset, she runs out of her tenement apartment to confront him but he’s no longer there. The protagonist embarks on a journey throughout the city, which is getting more and more dangerous. Finally, her lonely journey ends in tragedy. The director, Marta Koch, a fifth-year student at the Lodz Film School, uses the shades of red, black and white to create a picture that you can´t pass by indifferently.

All the films in the “New Faces” section present topics that are particularly close to HER Docs Film Festival, such as gender equality and fight against discrimination, sexuality and human rights. HER Docs FF is the only Polish festival that enables the audience to look at these themes exclusively from a female perspective. This year’s hybrid formula with films available to view online as well as in-person screening at the Warsaw theatres will allow everyone to get acquainted with the female stories. Save the date in your calendar and the new authors’ names in your memory as we will surely hear about them again!

Weronika Wysocka, Amy Muhoro

POLAND / 2020 / 6’

Living, scrolling, absorbing information together, we watched one another’s nervous and cognitive systems dissolving into hyper-reality. Stimulated by it, we all go through psychotic episodes while sitting in the armchair. Hitting a wall of powerlessness, we rationalize our frailties by giving away logic. The (in)visibility of large power tycoons appearing on our screens daily, clashes in our minds with an unimaginably strong need to regain our freedom and bring back justice.

Weronika Wysocka and Amy Muhoro constructed an artistic investigation showing the cause-and-effect process of data extraction by private com panies. Film is a visual representation of the mind of a new-activism ge neration, who in order to fight for their rights, loses their sanity from time to time, blaming themselves for their lack of adequate resistance sys tems – although only highly specialized experts may have access to that.

CREDITS

Directors: Weronika Wysocka

Screenplay: Weronika Wysocka, Amy Muhoro

Featuring: Eliza Chojnacka

Cinematography: Filip Skrońc

Editing: Weronika Wysocka

Sound: Zoi Mikhailova

Music: PIANO FANTASIA “Song for Denise” (Mike Serbee & Tidee), CRC MUSIQUE / SACEM

Producer: Maria Nowakowska

Production: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw World sales: Weronika Wysocka, Amy Muhoro

Language: English

Website: www.weronikawysocka.com

...and codes that break my heart. Anyway.

(is love) about keeping things private

Weronika Zalewska POLAND / 2021 / 4’

“(is love) about keeping things private” is a visual and poetic rhetoric over the notions of love that exceed the private and the romantic, the human and the non-human, the well-planned and the open-ended. Beyond the models of love and violence displayed in the mass culture which influence our dailiness, Weronika Zalewska comes into the dialogue with bell hooks’ book “All Abo ut Love” and investigates the potentials of love put into building respective, committed, transformative relationships that create our social ecologies. Criti cally to the film’s title, the artist observes animals in closed, human-made are as, dialoguing with the unobvious complexities that love brings when being unpacked. Acknowledging both the pains and the potentials that a tender observation brings is also a tribute to many contemporary scientists who de cided to forever sort out the enlightenment notions of anthropocentric objec tivity.

The video artwork created for the HER Docs Film Festival 2021.

CREDITS

Director: Weronika Zalewska

Screenplay: Weronika Zalewska

Cinematography: Weronika Zalewska

Editing: Weronika Zalewska

Sound: Weronika Zalewska

Producer: Weronika Zalewska

Production: Weronika Zalewska

World sales: Weronika Zalewska

Language: English

$ingapura

dir. Lan Yu SINGAPORE / 2019 / 4’

Michał Matuszewski 22.10 18:15 Elektronik 23.10 11:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Lan Yu Screenplay: Lan Yu, Danial Razak, Tan Li Jing Cinematography: Clement You Editing: Danial Razak Sound: Cheng Lijie Music: Cheng Lijie, Chleo Lee, Daniel Tai Producer: Diane Therese Rozario Production: Grace Tay, Roy Chua, Marvin Chan, Elton Lim World sales: Weave Pte Ltd

Language: English, Mandarin, Tagalog

Website: www.promofest.org/films/ingapura

2857

dir. Antonina Nowacka POLAND / 2020 / 22’

The film presents an imaginative time-space around the year 2857 - when the world will be inhabited by human beings, but in a radically synthesised form represented by electromagnetic waves, perceived by us - modern people - as sounds with specific frequencies. The pictures for the film were taken over the course of several years, during trips to various mountain regions, in order to document the space and environments unfavourable to the existence of the “traditional” forms of life of human beings. This austere and sometimes theatrical scenery aims to create a mystical atmosphere, as if it was out of this world.

22.10 18:15 Elektronik

CREDITS

Director: Antonina Nowacka

Cinematography: Antonina Nowacka

Editing: Antonina Nowacka Sound: Antonina Nowacka Music: Antonina Nowacka

Producer: Antonina Nowacka

Production: Antonina Nowacka World sales: Antonina Nowacka

Language: no dialogue Website: www.antoninanowacka.com

93Queen.

dir. Paula Eiselt USA / 2018 / 90’

Set in the Hasidic enclave of Borough Park, Brooklyn, “93Queen” follows a group of tenacious Hasidic women who are smashing the patriarchy in their community by creating the first all-female volunteer ambulance corps in New York City. With unprecedented — and insider — access, “93Queen” offers up a unique portrayal of a group of empowered women who are taking matters into their own hands to change their own community from within.

Special thanks to the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival.

24.10 16:00 Kino Muranów 28.10 20:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Paula Eiselt

Cinematography: Paula Eiselt

Editing: Sunita Prasad, Rebecca Laks Music: Laura Karpman

Producers: Paula Eiselt, Heidi Reinberg, Adam Bolt

Production: MALKA FILMS, SWR in co-production with: ARTE, American Documentary | POV, INDEPENDENT TELEVISION SERVICE (ITVS) World sales: Paula Eiselt

Language: English, Yiddish, Hebrew

www.93queen.com

A Cat Is Always Female

dir. Martina Meštrović, Tanja Vujasinovic CROATIA / 2019 / 16’

Through a feminist lens, the filmmakers pay homage to their professor Marija Ujević Galetović – one of Croatia’s most important sculptors. Marija’s life story and views are told through a combination of video footage and animation of her feminine sculptures.

Michał Matuszewski 22.10 20:00 Kino Muranów 28.10 20:00 Elektronik (together with „Beyond the Visible - Hilma af Klint”)

CREDITS

Directors: Martina Meštrović, Tanja Vujasinović

Screenplay: Martina Meštrović, Tanja Vujasinović

Animation: Martina Meštrović

Cinematography: Jasenko Rasol

Editing: Iva Kraljević

Sound: Hrvoje Pelicarić

Music: Alen Sinkauz, Nenad Sinkauz

Producer: Igor Grubić

Production: Kreativni sindikat World sales: Bonobostudio

Language: Croatian

www.bonobostudio.hr/en/distribution/a-cat-is-always-female

A Few Words About Us dir. Marzena Sowa BELGIUM

/ 2019 / 10’

My mother died. I am in vertigo. I think of her, I think of both of us. Hence this film „Un essai sur nous deux” („A Few Words About Us”). A fluid narrative ac companied by images, videos, drawings, memories that pop up here and the re, like an emergency to keep the disappeared person still for a while with you. Not to let her go. 23.10 13:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Marzena Sowa

Screenplay: Marzena Sowa

Cinematography: Marzena Sowa Editing: Marzena Sowa Sound: Marzena Sowa

Producer: Marzena Sowa

Production: Ecole de Photographie et de Techniques Visuelles Agnès Varda World sales: Marzena Sowa

Language: French

A Travelogue

dir. Anna Baumgart

“A Travelogue” documents the experience of migration of the female body and an object – a photographic camera. The video is a portrait of Mieczysława Nogajewska, a photographer and owner of the famous “Foto-Elite” pho tographic studio in Gdynia in the 1930s. After the start of World War II, Nogajewska lost her wealth and started her travel across Poland, for which she took her only camera. The camera was her best companion; a lens that allowed her to focus on her surroundings; a language, thanks to which she was able to tell her stories; a journal. In Anna Baumgart’s video, the came ra becomes an equal, a protagonist just as important as the photographer. The heavy body of the camera is directly attached to the photographer’s physique, becoming virtually a single body, joined together in dialogue. In the strangely realistic world of the video, the camera’s voice is heard as distinctly as the women’s narrative. Listening to the monologue/ dialogue, we are guided by the protagonist(s) journey through a dry and deserted landscape. Nogajewska-camera are stalled in the sand – their journey is strenuous, there’s a double weight that we ighs on the photographer’s back and the camera’s tripod. In her video, Baumgart merges a new materialist approach with a femi nist perspective, to later on move into object-oriented ontology: the story of a migrating female body is a thorough observation of an entangled existence of Nogajewska and the non-human object.

Stefańska

CREDITS

Director: Anna Baumgart

Screenplay: Małgorzata Radkiewicz

Cinematography: Szymon Kluz

Editing: Grzegorz Pacek

Sound: Marcin Popławski

Costume Design: Marta Szypulska Starring: Klara Bielawka, Anna Kłos

Producer: Anna Baumgart Production: Grzegorz Pacek World sales: Anna Baumgart

Language: Polish

A year without summer

Gosia

Trajkowska, Agata Lech

POLAND / 2020 / 10’

“A year without summer” is a poetic tale about the eruption of the Tambora volcano in 1815 and the consequences it caused around the world. The film aesthetizes the global catastrophe of the so-called „year without summer” to deal with the fear that has accompanied us for a long time: the fear of the end of the world. This play is a dreamlike delirium, our shared dream, the place where our thoughts met during the lonely return home by bus, this play com posed of the crumbs that accidentally fell onto the concrete. When lit by the sun, they looked like cosmic particles.

23.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Directors: Gosia Trajkowska, Agata Lech

Screenplay: Gosia Trajkowska, Agata Lech

Cinematography: Gosia Trajkowska

Editing: Agata Lech Sound: Agata Lech Music: Agata Lech

Producers: Gosia Trajkowska, Agata Lech

Production: Gosia Trajkowska, Agata Lech World sales: Gosia Trajkowska, Agata Lech

Language: Polish

Ahead of the Curve

dir. Jen Rainin, Rivkah Beth Medow USA / 2020

/ 95’

Growing up, Franco never saw any representation of queer women–she didn’t even know it was possible for a woman to be gay. When she realized she was a lesbian, it changed the course of her life. In 1990, Franco created a safe place for lesbians in the form of the “Deneuve” magazine - rebranded later, and in quite unusual circumstances, as “Curve”. Her approach to threats and erasure in the ‘90s was to lift all kinds of lesbians up and make them beautifully visible. The magazine helped build a foundation for many intersectional movements being led by today’s activists in the face of accelerating threats to the LGBTQ community. Decades later, as her legacy faces extinction and she reassesses her life after a disabling injury, she sets out to understand visibility work being led by an intersection of queer women today. Featuring Andrea Pino-Silva, Kim Katrin, Denice Frohman, Amber Hikes, Jewelle Gomez, Melissa Etheridge, and Lea DeLaria, and a score composed by the legendary Meshell Ndegeocello, “Ahead of the Curve” celebrates the legacy of a movement while considering the agenda of its future.

23.10 20:30 Elektronik 24.10 20:45 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Directors: Jen Rainin, Rivkah Beth Medow

Screenplay: Jen Rainin, Jess Congdon, Rivkah Beth Medow, Sara St. Martin Lynne

Cinematography: Svetlana Cvetko

Editing: Jessica Congdon

Sound: Luiza Sa-Davis, Emily Strong, Claudia Katayanagi, Lauretta Molitor, Paige Goedkoop, Iryna Kucherenko, Avantika Nimbalkar, Mary Wong, Harley O’Neill, Kip Wilkin

Music: Meshell Ndegeocello

Producers: Rivkah Beth Medow, Lindsey Dryden

Production: Frankly Speaking Films World sales: The Film Collaborative

Language: English www.curvemagmovie.com

All inclusive

dir. Corina Schwingruber Ilić SWITZERLAND / 2019 / 10’

Under the spell of mass entertainment on the high seas. 22.10 18:15 Elektronik 23.10 16:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Corina Schwingruber Ilić Screenplay: Corina Schwingruber Ilić Cinematography: Nikola Ilić

Editing: Corina Schwingruber Ilić Sound: Robert Büchel Music: Heidi Happy Producer: Stella Händler Production: freihändler Filmproduktion World sales: Square Eyes

Language: no dialogue

squareeyesfilm.com/shorts/allinclusive

Always Amber

dir. Lia Hietala, Hannah Reinikainen SWEDEN / 2020 / 75’

Seventeen-year-old Amber and best friend Sebastian refuse to let society la bel their gender. Moving through a spectrum of fluid identities, they dream together, party together, and form friendships with likeminded people. The queer teenagers inhabit an open and loving world far away from the judging eyes of others, in which everything seems possible. But when Amber falls in love with Charlie, their utopian world is shaken to its core. Trust issues begin to emerge, and in the midst of it all, Amber has to face going through their transition alone. 23.10 13:15 Elektronik 25.10 21:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Directors: Lia Hietala, Hannah Reinikainen

Cinematography: Lia Hietala, Sara Thisner Lindstedt, Amber Mastracci, Lucia no Mastracci, Alma Mastracci

Editing: Hannah Reinikainen, Lia Hietala, Anton Hemgren, Charlotte Landelius Sound: Fredrik Strålne Music: Shitkid

Producers: Göran Hugo Olsson, Melissa Lindgren Production: Story AB in co-production with: Sveriges Television World sales: Réservoir Docs

Language: Swedish, Italian www.reservoirdocs.net/films/always-amber

and died together one day dir. Pola Rader RUSSIA, GERMANY

‘They lived happily ever after and died together one day’, that’s how all the love stories Pola Rader used to listen to as a child end (* Russian variant). But what’s the ending of these ‘love stories’ in reality? Romanticization of lo ve’s notion and its dispute with harsh reality are the baseline for the film that takes an in-depth look at how and to what extent the cultural image of love de signates our consciousness. This visual manifesto recreates an idealized ima ge of an imperfect relationship, using the romantic aesthetic. The film analy ses an almost invisible difference between myths and reality in our heads and combines in this documentary footage with hyperbolic staged romantic scenes. Turning to her personal experience, Pola Rader considers the roman tic relationship of two people based on the example of her parents. When she was little, they loved each other; in her teens they broke up; now that she is an adult, they’re together again, with the experience of what they’ve been through before. Her parents and she tried to find out the visual images associated with their romantic relationship and recreated these scenes in front of the camera.

23.10 13:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Pola Rader

Screenplay: Pola Rader Cinematography: Pola Rader

Editing: Pola Rader Sound: Pola Rader Music: Green Boodah BDA WBK (Anton Sysoev)

Producers: Pola Rader Production: Pola Rader World sales: Pola Rader Language: no dialogue www.polarader.com/film

Ankebût

dir. Ceylan Özgün Özçelik TURKEY / 2020 / 5’

A woman, released from prison, drifts between nightmare and reality.

25.10 18:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Ceylan Özgün Özçelik

Cinematography: Gözde Koyuncu Editing: Selda Taşkın Sound: Fatih Rağbet, Eli Haligua Music: Ekin Fil Producer: Armağan Lale Production: Filmada World sales: Ceylan Özgün Özçelik

Language: Turkish

Another Europe dir. Sangam Sharma AUSTRIA / 2020

An essay film rooted in experimental cinema and queer storytelling. A female narrator (fellow artist Kathi Hofer) provides the voice over for this film, making it a reflection on the director’s life and her journey through Europe (which started off in the summer of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic). Associa tive spaces unfold. A train of thoughts. The boundaries between factual and memories become a blur. How much of her personal story can be read more globally?

Visual portraits of Europe’s faraway places, away from typical tourist hot spots provide the mise en scene for this film. Landscapes in transition, pictures of movement, visually resembling the long journeys she has undertaken using trains, ferries and public transport. The underlying sound compositions made by the Dutch musician Machinfabriek evoke feelings of isolation and aliena tion, but are still somewhat placeable and warm.

23.10 13:30 Kinoteka 24.10 11:45 Elektronik

CREDITS

Director: Sangam Sharma

Screenplay: Sangam Sharma

Cinematography: Sangam Sharma

Editing: Sangam Sharma

Sound: Richard Hunt

Music: Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefrabriek

Producers: Sangam Sharma Production: Sangam Sharma World sales: Sangam Sharma

Language: German www.sangamsharma.com/another-europe

„Droga Ty” to film taneczny, powstały na zlecenie Croi Clan Integrated Dance Company. Przedstawia performans tancerki Lindy Fearon, która w miejsce od wołanego występu na żywo, została nakręcona w swoim domu w hrabstwie Armagh w Irlandii w szczytowym momencie lockdownu w 2020 roku. Film łączy ruch oraz słowa napisane wcześniej przez Lindę, odkrywając życiowe ścieżki jej relacji ze swoim ciałem i samą sobą. 23.10 16:00 Elektronik 28.10 20:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

As You Can See

dir. Ghada Fikri EGYPT / 2019 / 8’

Can the lines in a hand hold stories? What memories do the grooves store? Ghada invites her mother to reflect on her life while taking us on a poetic exploration into her mother’s hands: the hands that raised five children al most single handedly. Why, Ghada asks, should someone have to give up their hands for those they love?

23.10 13:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Ghada Fikri

Screenplay: Ghada Fikri

Cinematography: Ghada Fikri

Editing: Ghada Fikri

Sound: Hady Bassiony Music: Bob Bradley, Thomas Balmforth

Producer: Ghada Fikri

Production: Ghada Fikri World sales: Ghada Fikri

Language: Arabic www.instagram.com/ghadafikri

Asmahan the diva

dir.

Chloé

Mazlo FRANCE / 2019 / 6’

The life of Asmahan, the diva and druze princess was short, but what a life! Marriages, glory, espionage, lovers, alcohol, poker, suicides, murders, scandals... This oriental Marilyn has marked the golden age of the Egyptian musical co medies. Today, her voice still resonates everywhere in the Middle East and her mysterious death in the waters of the Nile still feeds the wildest rumors… 22.10 18:15 Elektronik

CREDITS

Director: Chloé Mazlo

Screenplay: Christophe Duchiron, Chloé Mazlo

Animation: Victor Haegelin, Eric Montchaud

Cinematography: Nadine Buss

Editing: Stéphane Jarreau

Sound: Romain Le Bras, Benjamin Cabaj, Bruno Guéraçague Music: Bachar Mar-Khalifé

Producers: Catherine Rouault, Virginie Giachino

Production: Causette Prod, Doncvoilà productions in co-production with: Ma nuel Cam

World sales: Miyu Distribution

Language: French, Arabic

www.miyu.fr/distribution/asmahan-la-diva

Battlefield

dir. Silvia Biagioni, Andrea Laudante ITALY / 2020

/ 10’

Intimate, other, virginal, objectified, ethereal, fragmented: the female body mirrors a battlefield for all women that, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, claimed its re-appropriation. “Battlefield” is a tribute to all second-wave feminist move ments; through fragments of daily life and social battles, it reconstructs tho se key moments in our recent history. Sound and images give voice to the archives of Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico, in an imaginary journey between different representations of femininity of that time. Editing and music lead the viewer into an evocative place, in between memory and the present. In this sense, “Battlefield” is a passage through sound, visual and emotional spaces.

25.10 18:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Directors: Silvia Biagioni, Andrea Laudante

Editing: Silvia Biagioni

Sound: Andrea Laudante

Music: Andrea Laudante

Producer: Luca Ricciardi

Production: AAMOD - Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico

World sales: Luca Ricciardi, AAMOD - Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico

Language: Italian

www.silbia.it/battlefield, www.andrealaudante.com/battlefield

Bay of Plenty

A journey of discovery of a fictional, virtual island world. By means of a first -person camera perspective, the audience engages with and becomes part of the events. They encounter creatures who transcend categories such as male/ female, artificial/natural, animal/human and who are constantly changing the form of their bodies. Together, they explore possibilities of overcoming their physical boundaries and learn how to create new (life) conditions. 23.10 16:15 Kinoteka 24.10 15:15 Kinoteka 25.10 20:30 Elektronik 26.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Milva Stutz Animation: Milva Stutz

Editing: David Schlatter, Milva Stutz Sound: Lucia Cadotsch, Ludwig Wandinger

Producer: Milva Stutz Production: Milva Stutz World sales: Milva Stutz

Language: no dialogue www.milvastutz.ch/8997763/bay-of-plenty

Between Us dir. Dorota Proba POLAND / 2020

/ 53’

An intimate portrait of three relationships. The couples decide to have an ho nest conversation initiated by a set of seemingly simple questions. Slowly, a space for an exchange of hidden emotions and confessions is created. A depiction of contemporary love with a generous seasoning of humour, „Be tween Us” is a penetrating look at the meaning of intimacy.

24.10 13:45 Kino Muranów

CREDITS

Director: Dorota Proba Screenplay: Dorota Proba Cinematography: Weronika Bilska

Editing: Katarzyna Orzechowska Sound: Anna Rok, Dorota Proba, Krzysztof Janus Music: Adam Walicki, Giorgio Fazer (band), The Saturday Tea, Mateusz Franczak

Producers: Ewa Jastrzębska, Jerzy Kapuściński, Wojciech Marczewski, Karoli na Mróz

Production: Munk Studio Polish Filmmakers Association, Wajda Studio World sales: Munk Studio Polish Filmmakers Association

Language: Polish, Russian

www.betweenusfilm.com/pl

Beyond the VisibleHilma af Klint

Dyrschka GERMANY / 2019 / 93’

dir. Halina

The art world is confronted with a sensational discovery – a hundred years too late! How could it happen that an artist who discovered abstract painting at the beginning of the 20th century remained largely unnoticed? Hilma af Klint’s first abstract painting is dated 1906, four years before that of Vassily Kandinsky. Why was she ignored? This is the first film about her life and work. It investigates the role accorded to women in art history and asks why Hilma af Klint was scandalously denied the status of a pioneer of modern art. And how this recognition is now finally taking place. Today, her exhibitions attract millions of people worldwide. The cinematic approach of her paintings reveals an artist who is seeking for me aning in life beyond the visible. Hilma af Klint’s clairvoyant work developed a unique visual world and more than 25,000 pages of notes reveal a boundless thinking that led into an outstanding oeuvre. Her timeless paintings cross all conventional borders and resonate with our innermost feelings today. 22.10 20:30 Kino Muranów 24.10 18:30 Kinoteka 28.10 20:30 Elektronik

CREDITS

Director: Halina Dyrschka

Cinematography: Alicja Pahl, Luana Knipfer

Editing: Antje Lass, Mario Orias Sound: Niklas Kammertöns

Music: Damian Scholl

Producers: Eva Illmer, Halina Dyrschka Production: Ambrosia Film GmbH World sales: mindjazz pictures

Language: English, German, Swedish

www.mindjazz-pictures.de/filme/beyond-the-visible-hilma-af-klint

Black&White

dir. Eluned Zoë Aiano, Anna Benner CZECH REPUBLIC, GERMANY / 2019 / 19’

The small Czech town of Třeboň found itself at the centre of unexpected inter national attention when the world-wide press picked up on an obscure urban legend from World War II, some 70 years after the event. The story concerns a nurse who was raped by a Nazi and contracted syphilis as a result. Whi le tending other wounded soldiers, she seized her opportunity for revenge and systematically seduced them to pass on the deadly disease. She was so successful that eventually the gestapo had her executed. At least, this is the version told by the international press, but the residents of the town also have their own contradictory interpretations, including the lo cal historian and even the man who erected the plaque in the first place. “Black&White” pieces this story together through a collage of interviews with a group of locals. The film explores how the story came about in the first place, and how it evolved after it ended up in the news. Their reflections are visualised through a combination of excerpts from the history of cinema, together with animation, problematising the types of tropes and conventions used to depict the roles of women.

25.10 18:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Directors: Eluned Zoë Aiano, Anna Benner

Cinematography: Klára Belicová

Editing: Eluned Zoë Aiano

Sound: Vojtěch Knot, Michał Krajczok

Music: Raphael Tschernuth

Producers: Linda Dědková

Production: ZLA Films, Punk Film World sales: ZLA Films

Language: Czech www.zlafilms.com/blackandwhite

Brazen dir. Phuong Mai Nguyen, Charlotte Cambon de Lavalette FRANCE

/ 2020 / 33’

In Athens of the 4th century BC, a young girl dresses up as a man to study medicine and help women. In New York at the end of the 19th century, another girl pretends to be sick to bring to light the cruel treatment of patients in psychiatric hospitals. “Brazen” is a journey around the globe: from Australia to Liberia, from Afghani stan to France, from Greece to the United States, and again around the world. And also a journey in time: from the present day to antiquity. Each episode is a witty biography of a different fascinating woman. This mo saic brings together a pioneer in investigative journalism and an astronaut, social worker and inventor, silent movie star and a young rapper. Artists and sportswomen, organizers of protests and activists. This animated series for young audiences was made on the basis of the comic “Culottées” by Pénélo pe Bagieu, and commissioned by French public television. The protagonists of the ten episodes selected by the HER Docs Film Festival are: Annette Kel lermann, Nellie Bly, Leymah Gbowee, Mae Jemison, Sonita Alizadeh, Christine Jorgensen, Thérèse Clerc, Agnodike, Betty Davis and Hedy Lamarr. Klara Cykorz

24.10 12:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Directors: Phuong Mai Nguyen, Charlotte Cambon de Lavalette

Screenplay: Emilie Valentin, Elise Benroubi

Storyboard artists: Phuong Mai Nguyen, Charlotte Cambon de Lavalette Character design: Sarah Saidan Music: Fred Avril

Adapted from: “Culottées. Des Femmes qui ne font que ce qu’elles veulent” by Pénélope Bagieu (published by Editions Gallimard in 2016-2017)

Producers: Priscilla Bertin, Judith Nora, Arnaud Colinart

Production: Silex Films World sales: MIAM! Animation

Language: French www.silexfilms.com/en/animation/culottees

Breakwater dir. Cris Lyra BRAZIL / 2019 / 27’

A group of young lesbians from São Paulo go on a trip to a remote beach. While they wait for the new year’s eve, they build a safe and pleasant environment through music and friendship. They take care of themselves, they own their bodies, their memories and they feel free.

26.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Cris Lyra Screenplay: Ananda Maranhão, Camila Gaglianone, Cris Lyra, Elis Menezes, Lana Lopes, Raíssa Lopes e Yakini Kalid Cinematography: Wilssa Esser, Cris Lyra Editing: Beatriz Pomar, Henrique Cartaxo Sound: Daniel Turini, Henrique Chiurciu, Marina Bruno, Tamis Haddad Music: Obinrin Trio, Nã Maranhão

Producer: Camila Gaglianone Production: Camila Gaglianone World sales: Cris Lyra Language: Portugese www.anacrislyra.wixsite.com/quebramarshort

Call Me Intern

dir. Nathalie Berger, Leo David Hyde SWITZERLAND, NEW ZEALAND / 2019 / 67’

Young, unemployed and frustrated, filmmakers David and Nathalie set out to land an internship so they can examine the system from the inside in an act of millenial gonzo-filmmaking. After David accepts an internship at the United Nations, they move into a small blue tent on the Geneva lakefront and begin documenting his unpaid intern experience. Their action sparks a global press storm, challenging their roles as filmmakers. Meanwhile, Marisa works for a US presidential election campaign, while fending off harassment from her supervisors. Kyle interns for a Fortune 500 company, while living in a New York homeless shelter. Each of these interns faces a choice: accept the system the way it is or put their careers on the line to speak out against it. Their ac tions help give visibility and strength to a growing global intern movement. Their journeys reveal the pressures which lead so many millennials to work for free while pop-culture extracts and testimonies from academics, politicians and employers give us a sense of how wide the internship phenomenon has spread. 23.10 21:15 Kinoteka 25.10 20:30 Kinoteka 27.10 18:30 Elektronik

CREDITS

Directors: Nathalie Berger, Leo David Hyde

Cinematography: Nathalie Berger, Leo David Hyde

Editing: Nathalie Berger, Leo David Hyde Sound: Tihomir Vrbanec

Producers: Nathalie Berger, Laure Gabus Production: Collective Bièvre, Reportage World sales: Berta Film

Language: English www.callmeintern.com

Cloud Forest dir. Eliane Esther Bots NETHERLANDS / 2019 / 18’

A fairytale-like film in which five Dutch girls take the viewer on an imaginative journey through their parents’ experiences of the war in the former Yugosla via. A war which the girls haven’t physically experienced themselves. The narratives are a combination of facts and imaginations, vague memo ries and detailed impressions, transferred from the parents to their daughters. It is in the darkness, in the shadows, lit by the mobile phones, where these narratives can unfold. While the girls listen back to their own stories, the vie wer is invited to listen along and become part of the intimate spheres of their families.

25.10 18:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Eliane Esther Bots

Cinematography: Herman van den Bosch, Daniel de Oliveira Donato

Editing: Eliane Esther Bots Sound: Sergio González Cuervo

Producer: Manon Bovenkerk

Production: near/by film World sales: Eye Experimenteel

Language: Dutch www.nearbyfilm.com/portfolios/cloud-forest-2

Comfort

dir. Weronika Banasińska POLAND / 2018 / 10’

A girl visits a mysterious place which appears to be her inner self. In her journey into sensory exploration excitement soon turns into feelin gs of anxiety, as overstimulation finally throws her into a child-like state.

22.10 18:15 Kinoteka 24.10 15:15 Kinoteka 25.10 20:30 Elektronik

TWÓRCZYNIE I TWÓRCY

Director: Weronika Banasińska

Animation: Weronika Banasińska

Editing: Weronika Banasińska

Sound: Adam Skrzypkowski

Music: Adam Skrzypkowski

Producer: Robert Sowa

Production: Animation Film Studio in Krakow, Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts

World sales: Animation Film Studio in Krakow, Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts

Language: no dialogue

www.film.asp.krakow.pl

Delimitation dir.

Tereza Vejvodová CZECH REPUBLIC / 2020 / 15’

A young woman is looking for an apartment in a busy metropolis, while over coming the ubiquitous alienation and trying to find closeness. The topic of life wandering is examined through crowded city streets, empty spaces and me chanical underground. The film uses a combination of stylised movements and expressive dance to discover new forms of film language with an em phasis on the role of sound and picture more than a dialogue. As the woman explores different spaces, a new life is given to seeming banalities of everyday life. Physical dialogue with the void begins as the question of space identity in an anonymous cityscape. “Delimitation” is a personal journey from an inner isolation to the ability to open up to others, meanwhile discovering yourself. 23.10 16:00 Elektronik 28.10 20:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Tereza Vejvodová

Choreography, Featuring: Markéta Jandová Cinematography: Dušan Husár

Editing: Tereza Vejvodová

Sound: Matěj Lindner Music: Džian Baban

Producers: Anneta Furdecká, Pavel Picek Production: sol film World sales: sol film

Language: Czech www.solfilm.cz/blog/artem-6fmlh

Delphine’s Prayers

dir. Rosine Mbakam BELGIUM / 2021 / 91’

Rosine Mbakam tells the story of Delphine, a young Cameroonian woman who, after the death of her mother and abandonment by her father, had experienced sexual assault at the age of 13. For a time she resorted to sex work to support herself and her daughter and ended up marrying a Belgian man three times her age, hoping to find a better life in Europe. Seven years later, the European dream has all but turned to smoke. Delphine, like others, is part of a generation of young African women who chose to migrate to the Global North and had to face the brutal realities of gendered and racialized domination. Through her struggle, Delphine exposes the false promise of the European project and its neocolonial foundations.

The film is presented with the support of Bureau Wallonie-Bruxelles à Varsovie. Special thanks to the director Rosine Mbakam and Tândor Productions. 23.10 13:30 Kino Muranów 25.10 18:30 Elektronik 27.10 21:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Rosine Mbakam

Cinematography: Rosine Mbakam Editing: Geoffroy Cernaix Sound: Rosine Mbakam, Loïc Villiot

Producers: Geoffroy Cernaix, Aimé Césaire Dimenkeu Nkue

Production: Tândor Productions, Tândor Films World sales: Tândor Productions

Language: Cameroonian Pidgin English, French www.andorproductions.com/en/catalogue/les-prieres-de-delphine

Dinosaurs and the larger issues

dir. Justyna Bilik, Marta Nawrot POLAND /

2018 / 2’

A 3D poem for a poet, Irena Klepfisz - a lesbian author, academic and femi nist. Inspired by her “Dinosaurs and the larger issues“ from “Periods of stress“ (1975).

24.10 13:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Directors: Justyna Bilik, Marta Nawrot

Screenplay: Justyna Bilik Animation (3D): Marta Nawrot

Editing: Justyna Bilik, Marta Nawrot Music: Alex Raczyński

Producers: Justyna Bilik, Marta Nawrot

Production: Justyna Bilik, Marta Nawrot World sales: Justyna Bilik, Marta Nawrot

Language: English

Do the dead speak to us?

dir. Helena de Llanos SPAIN / 2019 / 21’

A house surrounded by an immense garden. There, a person, any one person, is devoted to removing the past. “Do the dead speak to us?” takes us into the universe of Fernando Fernán Gómez and Emma Cohen (both actors, filmma kers and writers) through the eyes of their granddaughter, also the short’s director, while it explores the relationships the living maintain with those who are not here anymore. Or are they?

25.10 18:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Helena de Llanos

Cinematography: Daniel Goldmann

Editing: Helena de Llanos Sound: Oscar Briongos Music: Los Panchos, Raisa Producers: Daniel Goldmann, Xavi Fortino, Josep Fernández, Helena de Llanos Production: Manila Films World sales: Agencia Freak

Language: Spanish www.agenciafreak.com

Dreamscape

dir. Francesca Tesler UK / 2020 / 8’

What did you dream about last night? Minutes feel like hours. Days stretch and blend into one meaningless blur. Through dream-like recollections, fears, anxieties and hopes are revealed. Made during the first UK lockdown.

25.10 18:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Francesca Tesler Cinematography: Francesca Tesler Editing: Francesca Tesler Sound: Francesca Tesler Music: FoolBoyMedia

Producer: Francesca Tesler Production: Francesca Tesler World sales: Francesca Tesler Language: English www.francescatesler.co.uk

Dust Karolina Breguła TAIWAN

/ 2019 / 22’

“Dust” is a story about two women living in an old district earmarked for demolition. Since their building is due to be demolished soon, all the ne ighbours have already left. Yet, the women decide to stay in their flat. The protagonists spend time in the abandoned multi-storey building and observe through the window bulldozers working around. The film was shot in a demolished building in Taipei, Taiwan, in collaboration with Ai-Yun Huang and Xiang-Ping Zhou, who are residents of Daguan, the town nearby Taipei, protesting against the planned demolition of their neighborhood. 23.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Karolina Breguła Screenplay: Karolina Breguła Cinematography: Karolina Breguła Editing: Karolina Breguła Sound: Karolina Breguła Producer: Karolina Breguła Production: Karolina Breguła World sales: Karolina Breguła

Language: Taiwanese www.karolinabregula.com/portfolio/dust

Earth in the Mouth

dir. Ewelina Rosińska GERMANY / 2020 / 20’

In a kaleidoscopic sequence, images search freely for stories that shape li ves — faith, patriotism, anarchism, tourism, returns and arrivals, sketches of daily life and nature. Like a photo book, the film creates new images and relationships between shots, reassembling a journey of impressions where the outlines of the world oscillate. Filmed in Poland, Germany, Portugal, Greece and Brazil. Shot in 16 mm, in seven chapters.

26.10 18:30 Elektronik

CREDITS

Director: Ewelina Rosińska

Cinematography: Ewelina Rosińska

Editing: Ewelina Rosińska Sound: Ewelina Rosińska Music: Roman Rosiński, Franz Frenzy, Ewelina Rosińska

Producer: Ewelina Rosińska

Production: German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) World sales: German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB)

Language: no dialogue

Eighteen dir. Dafne Lechuga Maroto, Laura D’Angeli, Maria Colomer Canyelles

DENMARK, ITALY / 2020 / 26

“Eigtheen” tells the story of Ansou Fall, a young man from Senegal, who came to Italy as an unaccompanied minor. Now, Ansou is turning eighteen and trying to figure out the messy process of becoming an adult.

23.10 11:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Screenplay: Dafne Lechuga Maroto, Laura D’Angeli, Maria Colomer Canyelles

Cinematography: Dafne Lechuga Maroto

Editing: Laura D’Angeli

Sound: Maria Colomer Canyelles, Jacob Schill Music: Daniel Basse

Producers: Dafne Lechuga Maroto, Laura D’Angeli, Maria Colomer Canyelles

Production: University of Copenhagen, Department of Film & Media Studies World sales: University of Copenhagen, Department of Film & Media Studies

Language: Italian

Engadin (a wanderer) Agnieszka Mastalerz

SWITZERLAND, POLAND / 2021 / 6’

At the time of recording this video, I am 30 years old. I am spending a few summer weeks in the Alpine valley of the Engadine, by the river Inn. The be ginnings of the trip unfold in the company of my mother, who has offered to share the two-day journey from Warsaw with me. According to our plan, after a few days I take my mother to the airport in Zurich - together still, we cross the Flüela Pass, open for the season, and I return to Susch, where I temporarily stay and work, on my own.

Agnieszka Mastalerz

The video artwork created for the HER Docs Film Festival 2021. 23.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Agnieszka Mastalerz

Screenplay: Agnieszka Mastalerz

Cinematography: Agnieszka Mastalerz (equipment thanks to Fuji Film Poland, ma terials realized during the residency at Muzeum Susch)

Editing: Agnieszka Mastalerz

Sound: Agnieszka Mastalerz

Music: Żaneta Rydzewska

Producer: Muzeum Susch

Production: Agnieszka Mastalerz World sales: Agnieszka Mastalerz

Language: English www.agnieszkamastalerz.com

Escape Route

dir. Lucija Ana Ilijić CROATIA / 2019 / 9’

Behind a number of sports achievements lies a number of attempts to fulfill the success story of others and thus deserve love, which I understood years later. The decision to waive was the only exit from the closed circuit.

23.10 13:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Lucija Ilijić

Cinematography: Tin Meze Editing: Lucija Ilijić

Sound: Borna Buljević, Luka Gamulin Music: Stray Dogg - No One But You

Producer: Anita Bastašić

Production: RESTART World sales: RESTART

Language: Croatian

Eternal Return

dir. Karolina Biedrowska POLAND / 2021 / 6’

In 2020, the world was overrun by the coronavirus pandemic. People won der if this is the end of the world they live in. What if it’s only a part of the continuous cycle that has always accompanied all mankind?

27.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Karolina Biedrowska Screenplay: Karolina Biedrowska Cinematography: Karolina Biedrowska

Editing: Karolina Biedrowska

Producers: Krystyna Doktorowicz, Ewa Krzemińska, Katarzyna Czekaj Production: Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School at the University of Silesia World sales: Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School at the University of Silesia

Language: Polish

Finest Dust Weronika Wysocka POLAND

The video “Finest Dust” from 2019 is a lyrical story inspired by the actions of one of Poland’s most important contemporary feminists and rights defenders, Katarzyna Bratkowska. A film about the energy potential of a woman whose struggle and persistence met far more obstacles than rewards. It tells the story of an ash-dusted, darkened, threatening to erupt, deeply bubbling element similar to a volcanic eruption. It’s a film about generations of women passing on the energy and anger needed to fi ght back. A woman sweats – she oozes anger, fear and frustration. Now our generation is devoting its energy and nerves to clashing with the patriarchy. We explode and freeze. Women’s strikes are underway.

CREDITS

Fire dir. Ania Bajorek POLAND / 2019

A music video that works with the idea of photography as a medium that stops - freezes an event in time. Director Ania Bajorek refers to a project “Girl Pictures, 1997-2002” by an American photographer Justine Kurland who pho tographed teen girls as outsiders, away from home, on the outskirts of the cities. In “Fire” scenes from Kurland’s photographs are frozen in time and described with a round camera movement.

25.10 18:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Ania Bajorek

Screenplay: Ania Bajorek

Cinematography: Agnieszka Kokowska

Editing: Irek Grzyb

Music: Natalia Przybysz, Jerzy Zagórski, Mateusz Waśkiewicz, Patryk Stawiń ski, Kuba Staruszkiewicz

Producers: Sławomir Richert, Michał Zamencki

Production: Warsaw Production Team

World sales: Kayax

Language: no dialogue

Forget Alberto for Now

Beina Xu

A refugee known only as Alberto flies from Athens to Brussels on a fake passport. Three years later, a small crew from Berlin tries to make a film by shooting the landscape of his transit. Things fall apart. They film pigeons instead. The artifice of documentary becomes the subject itself: where do we stand between image and meaning? A personal document—starring an angry shisha—emerges.

22.10 18:15 Elektronik 23.10 11:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Beina Xu

Screenplay: Beina Xu

Cinematography: Annegret Sachse Editing: Alex Bakri Sound: Gabor Ripli

Producers: Thomas Kaske, Sophie Perl Production: Kaske Film World sales: Kaske Film

Language: English, Arabic, French www.kaskefilm.de/alberto

Forms of Survival Dia na Lelonek POLAND

“Forms of Survival” were inspired by the numerous e-mails the artist receives from various institutions, festivals and biennials about exhibitions canceled due to the pandemic. Filming took place during Flow – znaczy przepływ and the residence at the Arsenał Gallery in Białystok. The work was created as part of the “mikrozamówienia” series carried out by Jasna 10: Warszawska Świetlica Krytyki Politycznej as part of the „Centrum Jasna” program financed by the City of Warsaw.

24.10 15:45 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Diana Lelonek

Screenplay: Diana Lelonek

Cinematography: Diana Lelonek

Editing: Diana Lelonek

Sound: Diana Lelonek, Marcin Partyka Music: (lector) Sandra Babij

Producers: Diana Lelonek, Jasna 10: Warszawska Świetlica Krytyki Politycznej Production: Diana Lelonek, Jasna 10: Warszawska Świetlica Krytyki Politycznej World sales: Diana Lelonek

Language: Polish

www.warszawa.krytykapolityczna.pl/dzialanie/mikrozamowienia/lelonek

Gentle Warriors dir. Marija Stonyté LITHUANIA, ESTONIA / 2020 / 74’

Since Russia annexed Crimea, the military conscription for men was reinstated in Lithuania due to the growing concern within the country over its suscepti bility to Russian military intervention. Simultaneously, a number of young wo men decided to register for military service on a voluntary basis. We follow 3 of these girls for 9 months as they live and train among 600 men at an isolated military base. In the beginning, the girls exploit a fanciful idea of what it means to be a soldier. A gentle girl, Agne, is dreaming of growing up and leaving her family home. Another girl – a tomboy Karina - sees the military as a chance to avoid the fate of her peers who all ended up working in supermarkets. Finally, a girl called Gintare just fancies the idea of wearing a soldier’s uniform at her wedding. Their romantic visions are soon altered as they start the service and their expectations are challenged by reality. 22.10 18:00 Kinoteka 23.10 15:45 Kinoteka 27.10 18:00 Kino Muranów

CREDITS

Director: Marija Stonyté

Screenplay: Vėjūnė Tamuliūnaitė, Marija Stonyté, Cinematography: Vytautas Plukas Editing: Mirjam Jegorov Music: Ann Reimann Producer: Giedre Žickyte

Production: Moonmakers in co-production with: Vesilind World sales: CAT&Docs’ Language: Lithuanian www.catndocs.com/index.php/categories/women/1142-gentle-warriors

Hard

reż.

Sasha Ihnatovich, Jasmina

SŁOWENIA / 2019 / 6 MIN.

Mustafić

Podróż od początków filmowej pornografii do współczesności, a zarazem roz drapywanie status quo mainstremowego, heteronormatywnego porno. Roz pędzający się kolaż archiwalnych taśm zostaje spleciony z wypowiedziami współczesnych aktorów porno. Film wydobywa sprzeczności i paradoksy pra cy w branży, zestawia trud i humor. W czasie zaledwie sześciu minut reżyserki konfrontują widzki i widzów z kilkoma afektywnymi zwrotami akcji, intensyw nie używając nie tylko obrazów, ale i dźwięku. Klara Cykorz

25.10 18:00 Kinoteka

TWÓRCZYNIE I TWÓRCY

Reżyseria: Sasha Ihnatovich, Jasmina Mustafić

Scenariusz: Sasha Ihnatovich, Jasmina Mustafić

Montaż: Sasha Ihnatovich, Jasmina Mustafić

Dźwięk: Sasha Ihnatovich

Muzyka: Sasha Ihnatovich

Producentk: Tom Gomizelj

Produkcja: Luksuz produkcija Właściciel praw: Luksuz produkcija

Język: arabski, chorwacki, angielski, rumuński, słoweński, hiszpański

In a Whisper

dir. Heidi Hassan, Patricia Pérez Fernández SPAIN, FRANCE, SWITZERLAND, CUBA /

2019 / 80’

Childhood friends Patricia and Heidi grew up in Cuba, where they both went to the film academy. As children of the 1970s, they were brought up with the communist ideals of Che Guevara, but the promised bright future failed to materialize. Independently of each other, they fled the malaise and censor ship of their homeland. Heidi ended up in Switzerland, Patricia in Spain. They had no contact for years. Now both 40, they seek a way to approach each other again, choosing the medium that suits them best: video letters. Both have continued to film their lives, even though it seemed unlikely that they would ever work in film again. In their frank audiovisual communication, the two mi grants recount all the roundabout routes they have taken in their lives: Patri cia’s years selling mojitos, Heidi’s search for work and connection with society in Geneva, and the struggle with alienation and nostalgia for a country that no longer exists. The result of the letters, ingeniously edited into a chronologi cal yet freewheeling whole, is a sensitive, two sided account of uprootedness, motherhood, love of film, friendship and freedom. (source: IDFA’s catalogue)

22.10 18:30 Kino Muranów 23.10 18:30 Elektronik

CREDITS

Directors: Heidi Hassan, Patricia Pérez Fernández

Screenplay: Heidi Hassan, Patricia Pérez Fernández

Cinematography: Heidi Hassan, Patricia Pérez Fernández

Editing: Heidi Hassan, Patricia Pérez Fernández, Diana Toucedo Sound: Sergio Fernández Borrás, Heidi Hassan, Patricia Pérez Fernández Music: Olivier Militon, Patricia Cadaveira

Producers: Daniel Froiz, Delphine Schmit

Production: Matriuska Producciones, Perspective Films in co-production with: Producciones de la 5ta Avenida, PCT cinéma télévision World sales: Habanero Film Sales Language: Spanish, French www.habanerofilmsales.com/portfolio/a-media-voz

Interspecies Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp

WetMeWild (Justyna Górowska, Ewelina Jarosz), in cooperation with Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens USA / 2021 / 20’

Inspired by the ecosexual weddings by Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, cyber-nympho artist-brides, Ewelina Jarosz and Justyna Górowska, have mar ried the brine shrimp. The interspecies ceremony was witnessed by the pu blic in the multispecies documentary movie “Anti-monument to the Shrimp: An Ecosexual Love Story”, enhanced with augmented reality technology. The brides encourage others to love, honor and cherish the resilient brine shrimp and learn about the perils they and their ecosystem face. The vows to the brine shrimp of the Great Salt Lake were made on the Rozel Point peninsula near the “Spiral Jetty” (1970), a land art work by Robert Smithson. The digital ecosexual ceremony was the first more-than-human wedding event in the world using Augmented Reality to create the brine shrimp brides/grooms out of digital air. Every person using an Android smart phone is able to enjoy being in digital nature and explore the posthuman community in augmented reality thanks to Artemia App.

The video artwork created for the HER Docs Film Festival 2021. „ ALL

CREDITS

Concept: Dr Ewelina Jarosz

Artistic director and AR specialist: Dr Justyna Górowska

Director of the performance: Dr Joy Brooke Fairfield

Costumes: Martyna Koltun @martyna_koltun

CLOUDY EXCEPT A NARROW OPENING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SKY ” exhibition

As she is showering, dressing, putting on her make-up, a woman bares her soul. She speaks of her fears, her complexes, and the process of accepting –even loving – herself. Insecure, she loves neither her body nor her face. Then, one day, she starts posing as a photo model for a friend. With the passing of time, the photographs reveal to her the beauty of herself. 23.10 16:15 Kinoteka 24.10 15:15 Kinoteka 25.10 20:30 Elektronik

CREDITS

Director: Élodie Dermange Screenplay: Élodie Dermange Animation: Élodie Dermange Editing: Élodie Dermange, Zoltán Horváth Sound: Élodie Dermange, Jérôme Vittoz Music: Fatima Dunn Producer: Nicolas Burlet Production: Nadasdy Film in co-production with: RTS - Radio Télévision Suisse World sales: Nadasdy Film Language: English www.nadasdyfilm.ch/intimity

KNOW / KNEW / KNOWN

dir. Domka Spytek SWEDEN / 2019 / 3’

A short film about the disproportion between representation of male and female figures in recently published design books. According to Delphine Bedel’s research 60-90% of fine art students are female, but after graduation only 20% of them will be visible in publications or on the market. Intrigued by the numbers I took a few recently published design books and counted male and female designers mentioned in them. The re sults are shown in the video “KNOW / KNEW / KNOWN”. 22.10 20:00 Kino Muranów 24.10 18:30 Kinoteka 28.10 20:00 Elektronik

CREDITS

Director: Domka Spytek Screenplay: Domka Spytek Cinematography: Domka Spytek Editing: Domka Spytek Sound: Domka Spytek Music: Domka Spytek Producer: Domka Spytek Production: Domka Spytek World sales: Domka Spytek Language: English www.domkaspytek.com

La Reina

dir. Julia Konarska UK / 2020 / 13’

26.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Julia Konarska

Screenplay: Julia Konarska

Cinematography: Julia Konarska

Editing: Maciej Rotowski, Julia Konarska Sound: Julia Konarska Music: Bensound

Producer: Julia Konarska

Production: Queen Mary University of London World sales: Julia Konarska

Language: English

“La Reina” is a short documentary about Edisson Medina aka Paquita De La Torres, a London-based Latina drag queen. In the film, Edisson discusses some common misconceptions about the art of drag and how much performing means to him.

Lessons of Love dir. Małgorzata Goliszewska, Kasia Mateja DIR. MAŁGORZATA GOLISZEWSKA, KASIA MATEJA

For decades, Jola did what was expected of her. As a mother of six and the wife of an abusive husband, she would put on her make-up and colourful clothes to pretend everything was fine. One day something breaks inside her and she finds the strength to leave her husband and start living life to the fullest. She hangs out with her girlfriends, dances in Café Smile, writes poems and songs. She sings about love – something she’s always dreamt of, yet never experienced. Unexpectedly, she meets Wojtek, who treats her like a queen. Will she be able to open up and embrace love for the first time? Especially, when she finds out that she has less time than she thought?

28.10 18:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Małgorzata Goliszewska, Kasia Mateja

Screenplay: Małgorzata Goliszewska, Anna Stylińska

Cinematography: Mateusz Czuchnowski, Kasia Mateja, Tymon Tykwiński

Editing: Alan Zejer Sound: Anna Rok, Jarosław Sadowski, Marcin Lenarczyk Music: Marcin Lenarczyk

Producers: Anna Stylińska, Izabela Łopuch Production: Widok, HBO Europe World sales: Autlook Filmsales

Language: Polish www.autlookfilms.com

Let me in dir. Ania Płonka HUNGARY

In the world of total control and exploitation, in a city possessed by the neo-nazi hit squads, a queer boy is trying to find a safe place in the mysterious villa, avoided by the locals because of the yellow flag, a symbol of the plague, waving above the entrance to the building. He records a casting video and comes to meet the inhabitants of the house.

26.10 18:30 Elektronik

CREDITS

Director: Ania Płonka Screenplay: Ania Płonka Cinematography: Małgorzata Rabczuk

Editing: Ania Płonka Sound: Krzysztof Sokół Music: FOQL Producer: Viewfinder Production: Viewfinder World sales: Viewfinder

Language: Russian, Hungarian, Polish

Let My Body Speak

dir. Madonna Adib UK, LEBANON / 2020 / 10’

A personal and intimate journey exploring the repression experienced by the filmmaker during her childhood when she faced sexual control in Dama scus also experiencing a growing socio-political repression in the late 80s –early 90s. Through the creative use of a family archive in Damascus mixed with current footage of her body she reconstructs the pain of the past absorbed by her body.

Lovemobil

dir. Elke Margarete Lehrenkrauss GERMANY / 2019 / 106’

When night falls in rural Germany, old VW-caravans decorated with flashy li ghts line the country roads which lead through potato fields and dark forests. Inside these buses sex workers from Eastern Europe and Africa await their clients who are passing by. The film portraits women who came from far away in search of income and a better life. Until one day, in the ghostly atmosphere, the murder of one of the workers shakes everybody. A film about a microcosm that describes a society at the hardest end of a globalized capitalism. “Love mobil” is a hybrid documentary using elements of mise en scene. 22.10 20:30 Elektronik 23.10 18:00 Kinoteka 24.10 18:00 Kino Muranów

CREDITS

Director: Elke Margarete Lehrenkrauss

Screenplay: Elke Margarete Lehrenkrauss

Cinematography: Christoph Rohrscheidt

Editing: Elke Margarete Lehrenkrauss, Sven Kulik Sound: Henrik Cordes

Music: Dascha Dauenhauer

Producer: Elke Margarete Lehrenkrauss

Production: Elke Margarete Lehrenkrauss World sales: Elke Margarete Lehrenkrauss

Language: English, German, Bulgarian

www.lovemobil-film.com

Luca (m/f/x)

dir. Hannah Schwaiger, Ricarda Funnemann GERMANY /

2019 / 7’

Society distinguishes between two sexes: male and female. In Germany there is a new law for a new legal gender “divers”. “Divers” refers to a gen der spectrum between male, female and beyond. “I feel my own sex very changeable, it never feels like I am a man or a woman. But only a body to which belongs a spirit and a mind that creates”. This is how Luca describes themselves and unites alleged characteristics of both classical sexes in his appearance. Although Luca has experienced antipathy and even physical violence, because of the appearance, Luca would never stop being themselves. Eventually, Luca found acceptance in the theatre community, being able to express themselves and experience other lives and stories through collective artistic practice. The rehearsals for the piece “Caligu la” (directed by Clara Nielenbock), which were accompanied during the shooting are exemplary for this approach. The story of this play made it possible for Luca to develop empathy even for a historical tyrant beyond Luca’s own morality. The actor is fascinated by the inherent effect of acting on Luca’s own personality. By developing a close bond to a role and experiencing other life stories and perspectives give you a better understanding of another person. Finally, it makes you more consi derate and empathetic for somebody else and overall. An effect that should not only be limited to the performance and may be passed on to people someday who are offended by Luca’s looks, beliefs and way of loving.

Director: Hannah Schwaiger, Ricarda Funnemann

Cinematography: Hannah Schwaiger

Editing: Hannah Schwaiger, Ricarda Funnemann Sound: Arno Augustin Music: Henric Schleiner

Producers: Hannah Schwaiger, Ricarda Funnemann Production: Funnemann & Schwaiger Produktion World sales: Hannah Schwaiger, Ricarda Funnemann Language: German

Lushfulness dir. Weronika Szyma POLAND / 2020 / 6’

When a girl meets her mirror reflection, unexpectedly her fears and insecurities about her body turn into a passionate and free self-exploration. Her fantasies come to life. But there’s also a darker side of this game. Is it possible to become united with your own self?

24.10 13:00 Kinoteka

24.10 15:15 Kinoteka

25.10 20:30 Elektronik

CREDITS

Director: Weronika Szyma

Animation: Weronika Szyma

Editing: Weronika Szyma, Agnieszka Białek Music: Damian Czajka

Producer: Agata Golańska

Production: Lodz Film School World sales: Studio Filmowe Indeks, Lodz Film School

Language: Polish

www.weronikaszyma.com/lushfulness

What does caring for a family mean? And when is the right time to start a revolution? Is it responsible to take such a risk when you are a woman, a mother,a peasant? “Maria” is the result of one year’s work documenting the lives of the inhabitants of Iwona Ogrodzka’s home village. Collected materials: recordings, conversations, and notes were used to create a biography of Maria, a fictional heroine who, sensing the impending threat, joins the uprising. The story suspended in an unspecified pla ce and time is an attempt to supplement the history of Łukowica with a biography of a peasant who opposes the conformism in her immediate environment, decides to fight for a better future and in the name of this fight, leaves her children. “Maria” was produced with support from the Ministry of Culture, National Heritage and Sport of the Republic of Poland.

Martha: A Picture Story

Martha Cooper is an unexpected icon of the street art movement – a tiny, grey-haired figure running alongside crews

graffiti artists. In the 1970’s, as the boroughs of New York City burned, she worked as a photographer for the “New York Post”, seeking images of creativity and play where others saw crime and poverty. As a result, she captured some of the first images of New York graffiti, at a time when the city had declared war on this new culture. Martha and her co-author Henry Chalfant compiled these images into the book “Subway Art”. However, the commercial failure of the book forced Martha to leave graffiti behind, moving on to document many other hidden cultures of New York. 20 years later Martha discovers she has become a legend of the graffiti world – a culture that has now exploded into a global movement. “Subway Art” became one of the most sold – and stolen – art books of all time, photocopied and shared by graffiti artists for decades. At 75 years of age, Martha finds herself navigating a culture vastly changed. The small community born from struggle and adversi ty, has grown into a commercial industry fuelled by the rise of social media. Now every new piece of street art is immediately uploaded, and crowds line up for selfies in front of popular works. Martha struggles to find her place in this new world, driven by a passion for capturing the creativity that helps people rise above their environment.

of masked

Material Bodies

reż. Dorothy Allen-Pickard UK / 2020 / 4’

Through interweaving dance and dialogue “Material Bodies” looks at the rela tionship between amputees and their limbs, exploring how a prosthetic limb can be more like a piece of jewellery, an unpredictable friend, a dance com panion, or a part of you. The short dance-documentary brings to life people’s experiences of living with disability by focusing on four amputees’ sensory response to the world, with a focus on how architecture and design can affect your physical and emotional life. 23.10 16:00 Elektronik 28.10 20:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Dorothy Allen-Pickard

Cinematography: Jack Wells

Editing: Dorothy Allen-Pickard Sound: Ben Hauke, Adina Astrate Music: Batsumi

Producers: Julie Machin, Lucy Pullicino Production: My Accomplice World sales: Dorothy Allen-Pickard

Language: English www.dorothyallenpickard.com

Milo dir. Nadia Szymańska POLAND / 2021 / 14’

24.10 13:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Nadia Szymańska

Cinematography: Nadia Szymańska Editing: Aleksandra Kasprowicz Sound: Daniel Adamczyk Music: Marcel Baliński

Producer: Nadia Szymańska, Karolina Fronik

Production: Lodz Film School

Language: Polish

A young mother tries to enjoy a carefree vacation while being a single mother to her 3-year-old son, Milo.

Mixed Race

dir. Tai Linhares BRAZIL, GERMANY / 2019 / 29’

An authoritarian regime plans to restore white supremacy in Brazil. Their first act is to demand the return of all white Brazilian citizens living abroad. In the midst of this political chaos, Tai needs to prove that she is not white, but is faced with uncertainty about her own racial identity. The film delves into the ambiguous concept of race in Brazil, exploring the traces left by its colonial past and the family history of the director. An exploratory journey between fiction and documentary.

26.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Tai Linhares

Screenplay: Tai Linhares Cinematography: Aline Juárez Editing: Sully Ceccopieri Sound: Caio Cesar Loures, Mariana Bahia, Nadoki Studio

Producer: Tai Linhares Production: Tai Linhares World sales: Tai Linhares

Language: Portugese, German www.tailinhares.com

Morgana

dir. Isabel Peppard, Josie Hess AUSTRALIA / 2019 / 71’

After 20 years as a dutiful housewife stuck in a loveless, sexless marriage, Morgana has had enough of her dreary life. Desperately lonely and starved of intimacy, she books a male escort for one last hurrah before ending it all. Her final night takes an unexpected turn when her relationship with the escort opens up a new world of personal and sexual freedom. After he aring about a competition for first time erotic filmmakers, Morgana directs and stars in a film about her own story, “Duty-Bound”. Unexpectedly, she wins the contest, catapulting her into the international Feminist Porn community and taking her from Australia to Berlin. Life merges with art as Morgana uses erotic filmmaking as a tool for creative catharsis, while struggling with demons from her past. “Morgana” is an artistic character portrait of a 50-year-old housewife, who re-invents herself as a sex-positive feminist porn star.

CREDITS

Directors: Isabel Peppard, Josie Hess

Cinematography: Isabel Peppard, Josie Hess

Editing: Julie-Anne De Ruvo

Sound: John Kassab, Doron Kipen ASSG Music: Jordan Gilmour

Producer: Karina Astrup

Production: House of Gary World sales: Juno Films Language: English www.morganadocumentary.com

Mother-Child

dir. Andrea Testa ARGENTINA / 2019 / 66’

In the consulting rooms of a public hospital in Argentina, social workers dialogue with pregnant young girls, a woman who has just given birth or ones that are hospitalized due to unsafe abortions. Coming from the environment of extreme poverty and vulnerability, many of them are victims of gender violence. Hence their pregnancies discourage them even more to imagine a hopeful present or future. The film reflects the desires, tensions and fears around forced maternity and clandestine abortion.

Special thanks to María Vera (Kino Rebelde) and the director Andrea Testa.

24.10 18:45 Kinoteka 26.10 20:45 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Directors: Andrea Testa

Screenplay: Andrea Testa, Francisco Márquez

Cinematography: Gustavo Schiaffino Editing: Lorena Moriconi Sound: Abel Tortorelli

Producers: Luciana Piantanida, Andrea Perner, Francisco Márquez Production: Pensar con las Manos in co-production with: Insomnia Films, Colectivo Hombre Nuevo World sales: Kino Rebelde (María Vera)

Language: Spanish www.kinorebelde.com/mother-child

Mullah’s Daughter

dir. Mahdieh Mirhabibi, Hassan

IRAN, UK / 2019 / 72’

Solhjou

A unique inside story of a conservative Mullah’s (Imam’s) family in Iran, filmed by his daughter, Mahdieh. She is a photographer banned from her job by the government due to political restrictions. Mullah is in radical support of Iranian regime, but he is struggling to manage his defiant children with opposing political and religious beliefs. Mahdieh has a secret to share with her family: she is planning to leave the country with her boyfriend. However, it is not that easy and things are getting more complicated...

22.10 20:30 Kinoteka 24.10 11:15 Kinoteka 27.10 20:45 Muranów

CREDITS

Directors: Mahdieh Mirhabibi, Hassan Solhjou

Cinematography: Mahdieh Mirhabibi, Marzieh Mirhabibi, Ali Akbar Mirhabibi

Editing: Hassan Solhjou

Sound: Ensieh Maleki, Masood Azizi

Producers: Mahdieh Mirhabibi, Hassan Solhjou Production: TFC World sales: TFC

Language: Persian www.hassansolhjou.com/films#h.xztuk6g9lhe8

My Fat Arse and I dir. Yelyzaveta Pysmak POLAND

One morning a girl tries on a pair of new pants, yet they don’t quite fit her. More precisely, it is impossible to zip them. The girl is bewildered. In the mirror she sees herself like the fattest piglet the world has seen. She decides to go on a strict diet as quickly as possible. No sweets, no sodas, just water with an occasional lemon. The plan goes quite well, draining all of her fat away, but with that goes all the joy of life. Even though now extremely thin, the girl doesn’t stop. She is now more of a zombie, coming blindly to the fridge that haunts her at night. In the moment of the last seduction by the fridge the Angel of United Bitches of Slimbuttlandia comes to her with a royal invi tation to visit the Kingdom and to participate in a royal ceremony. What is this ceremony? Are the Skinny Buttangels that lovely and harmless as they try to appear? Which God do they praise? Is there a way back from The United Bitches of Slimbuttlandia if anything goes slightly off track? 24.10 13:00 Kinoteka 24.10 15:15 Kinoteka 25.10 20:30 Elektronik

CREDITS

Director: Yelyzaveta Pysmak

Screenplay: Yelyzaveta Pysmak

Animation: Yelyzaveta Pysmak

Editing: Natalia Jastrzębska

Sound: Szymon Kucharski, Michał Lejczak

Music: Michał Lejczak

Producer: Agata Golańska

Production: Lodz Film School

World sales: Studio Filmowe Indeks, Lodz Film School

Language: Polish

www.sp.kff.com.pl/films/ja-i-moja-gruba-dupa/

My Vagina Labyrinth

dir. BadBadMeowMeow TAIWAN / 2019 / 5’

“My Vagina Labyrinth” is an animation with a video game style, based on a female perspective. A contemporary image of female body eroticism. The sexual experience that enters the vagina can be imagined as a maze adventure. Players have to go through various levels in this vaginal maze to unlock arousing passions and attack the clitoris... until the treasure of the or gasm can be excavated. In the video, a large number of symbols of body and sex are used to show female eroticism and fantasy.

My Womb dir. Martina Trepczyk AUSTRIA /

2019 / 3’

A portrait of a dancer and poetic criticism questioning the power over fe male bodies. It’s everywhere: patriarchal systems, schools, the government, religious institutions, society’s minds. “My Womb” draws parallels from the dancer’s upbringing in one of Poland’s strictest ballet schools and today’s patriarchic system, in which an institution has more say over a female’s body than herself. Poland, compared to other European countries, still has the strictest abortion laws, a torn past, battle wounds and the stale old systems, that we try to break. “My Womb” is a love letter to everyone who stands up for themselves. 23.10 16:00 Elektronik 28.10 20:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Martina Trepczyk

Screenplay: Martina Trepczyk Choreography, Featuring: Anna Lis Cinematography: Martina Trepczyk Editing: Martina Trepczyk

Sound: David Furrer

Music: Taris

Producer: Martina Trepczyk Production: Martina Trepczyk World sales: Martina Trepczyk

Language: English Strona: www.martinatrepczyk.com

Of water ZAKOLE POLAND

The film focuses on micro-observations, telling the story of Zakole Wawerskie - a vast wetland located almost in the heart of Warsaw. When entering this space, although we can still hear the sounds of the city in the background, we agree to follow another set of rules established by the surrounding environ ment. Water, air, constant transformation, dependence on one another, de composition and varied defensive mechanisms determine life in the swamp and around it. The area is inhabited and visited by different beings - beavers, birds, dragonflies, alder, reed and grass. As well as humans - although they fell the least at home there. Something constantly irritates them, something crowds, tickles and bites. They perform a series of weird, ritualistic gestures, trying to save themselves from the fiercest defenders of the wet landscape. The sounds of the immersive, swamp journey were created by Zaumne (Mateusz Olszewski).

23.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Directors: Grupa ZAKOLE

Screenplay: Grupa ZAKOLE

Cinematography: Olga Roszkowska, Pola Salicka

Editing: Olga Roszkowska, Pola Salicka

Sound: Krystyna Jędrzejewska-Szmek (lector)

Music: Mateusz Olszewski (Zaumne)

Producer: Departament Obecności Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie

Production: Grupa ZAKOLE

World sales: Grupa ZAKOLE, Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie

Language: Polish www.zakole.pl

Once Upon a Time in Venezuela

dir. Anabel Rodríguez Ríos

VENEZUELA, UK, BRAZIL, AUSTRIA / 2020 / 99’

Once upon a time, the Venezuelan village of Congo Mirador, floating on stilts just inches above the deep Lake Maracaibo, was prosperous, alive with fishermen and poets. In recent years, it has decayed and disintegrated, rot ting beneath pollution and neglect—a small but prophetic reflection of Venezuela itself. At the center of the village’s existential fight for survival stand two female leaders—Mrs. Tamara, the Chavista government coordinator of the village, and Natalie, a vocal teacher and opponent of Mrs. Tamara and her state-approved practices of bribery and intimidation. As the contentio us national elections approach, fear within the community extends beyond the partisan divide of Venezuelan politics; the villagers’ homes are quite literally vanishing into the sedimented water, displacing families with no means of surviving elsewhere. Director Anabel Rodríguez Ríos’s striking and mournful ode to her country bears first hand wit ness to the irreversible consequences of government corruption, while simultaneously capturing the resilient spirit of those most directly affected by Venezuela’s profound economic and political crises.

23.10 11:00 Kinoteka 24.10 18:00 Kinoteka 27.10 20:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Anabel Rodríguez Ríos

Screenplay: Anabel Rodríguez Ríos, Sepp R. Brudermann

Cinematography: John Márquez

Editing: Sepp R. Brudermann

Sound: Marco Salaverría, Gherman Gil, Daniel Turini

Music: Nascuy Linares

Producers: Sepp R. Brudermann, Claudia Lepage

Production: Sancocho Público A.C. in co-production with: Golden Girls Film, Pacto Filmes, Tres Cinematografía, Spiraleye Productions Ltd.

World sales: Rise And Shine World Sales

Language: Spanish

www.onceuponatimeinvenezuela.com

The film is shaped as a diary of the director’s memories, telling about the problematic relationship between a father and a daughter caused by the father’s mental illness, and the troubles caused by this condition while growing up. The need to free herself from the influence of the past and to break the shell of silence around this painful situation brings Maryia back to Belarus. There she shoots interviews with various family mem bers and collects their memories and points of view. She takes respon sibility for her emotions and concludes that she needs to free herself from the influence of the past, associated with papa’s disease, and to finally build her independent self-portrait. This gives her a chance to revive and to finally show the sincere feelings of the adult daughter to her papa. 22.10 18:15 Kinoteka 23.10 13:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Maryia Yakimovich

Screenplay: Maryia Yakimovich

Animation: Maryia Yakimovich

Editing: Maryia Yakimovich, Wojciech Słota Sound: Michał Papara Music: Michał Papara

Producer: Robert Sowa

Production: Animation Film Studio in Krakow, Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts World sales: KFF Sales & Promotion

Language: Polish, Russian www.sp.kff.com.pl/en/films/papa-2

Passage

dir. Sarah Baril Gaudet CANADA / 2020 / 81’

Gabrielle and Yoan are 18 years old. Even though they both grew up in Temiscamingue, their aspirations are opposite. While Yoan wants to leave the area to break away from his loneliness and explore his homosexuality, Gabrielle is torn at the thought of going over a hundred kilometers away from home to carry on with her studies. While summer is in full swing, “Passage” paints a poetic portrait of these two protagonists transitioning into adulthood, trying to blossom and chart their own path. 23.10 11:30 Elektronik 24.10 11:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Sarah Baril Gaudet Screenplay: Sarah Baril Gaudet Cinematography: Sarah Baril Gaudet

Editing: Justine Gauthier Sound: Jacob Marcoux, Marie-Pierre Grenier, Olivier Germain Music: Viviane Audet, Robin-Joël Cool Producer: Audrey Fallu Production: La Cabane World sales: Les Films du 3 Mars

Language: French www.f3m.ca/en/film/passage

Primary Swarm

Agnieszka Mastalerz, Michał

POLAND / 2018 / 17’

Szaranowicz

From “Swarm in (Non-)Motion” by Anna Ptak:

Primary Swarm relies on an event developing in a given time. A group of Explorers traverses a cocoon-like space. Its rounded shape defines the manner of movement. The space on the outside plays the role of the queen bee. The figures look as if they had to learn to walk anew: slow -paced movement, careful gesture, the absorbing hole of the turbine where the eponymous swarm thrusts into.

CREDITS

Directors: Agnieszka Mastalerz, Michał Szaranowicz

Screenplay: Agnieszka Mastalerz, Michał Szaranowicz

Cinematography: Filip Zubowski, Wawrzyniec Skoczylas, Michał Szaranowicz

Editing: Michał Szaranowicz

Sound: Stanisław Najmiec, Michał Szaranowicz

Producers: MOS Gorzow, Society of Authors ZAiKS

Production: Agnieszka Mastalerz

World sales: Agnieszka Mastalerz, Michał Szaranowicz

Language: no dialogue www.agnieszkamastalerz.com

ALL CLOUDY EXCEPT A NARROW OPENING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SKY ” exhibition

Promenade

dir. Delphine

Bereski

FRANCE / 2020 / 17’

Film na granicy eksperymentu i performansu, oddaje za pomocą ruchu zarów no osobiste doświadczenia chorowania i wyzdrowienia z Covid-19, jak i zbioro we przeżycia pierwszego lockdownu w małej społeczności przebywającej na rezydencji w Cité Internationale des Arts w Paryżu. Podczas jednego ujęcia dron podąża za fantomatycznym ciałem, wyruszającym ze swojego pokoju na wewnątrz. Podczas tej podróży obraz trzyma nas z dala od tego ciała, podczas gdy jego oddech i bicie serca zanurzają nas w intymności. 23.10 16:00 Elektronik 28.10 20:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Delphine Bereski

Cinematography: Lukas Zerbst

Sound: Delphine Bereski, Youssef Chebbi Music: Youmna Saba

Producer: Delphine Bereski

Production: Pola Magnetyczne World sales: Delphine Bereski

Language: no dialogue

Radio Silence dir. Juliana Fanjul SWITZERLAND,

March 2015. Due to political pressure and false pretenses,

the main voice of independent journalism in Mexico, is fired with her team from the MVS Radio station. The next day more than 200,000 people demon strate and sign a petition calling for her return on air and the end of censor ship. Despite this exceptional mobilization, the station does not give way. Who is this woman behind the famous Mexican journalist? How did she become a popular figure of resistance and freedom of expression in Mexico? Who are her main enemies? Why is she still alive when dozens of her colleagues have been murdered in recent years and months? Does she find herself trapped in a role she did not want to endorse? “Radio Silence” captures Carmen’s enduring and dangerous fight to recreate a space of freedom of speech and keep informing her listeners. In some other countries this might be an easier task, but in Mexico, where the social and economic situation is dominated by drug traffickers and political corruption, Carmen and her team have an uphill battle. Through testimonials, archive footage and social networks excerpts, we follow Carmen and her team in a large ongoing investigation conducted alongside the construction of her new internet radio station. “Radio Silence” immerses the viewers in the fight of Carmen Aristegui - a woman inhabited by extraordinary courage. A fight against monopolistic concentration of the media, against an authoritarian and corrupt political system, all in a climate undermined by threats and constant intimidation of drug traffickers. 26.10 21:00 Kinoteka 28.10 20:30 Muranów

CREDITS

Director: Juliana Fanjul

Cinematography: Jérôme Colin

Editing: Yael Bitton

Sound: Carlos Ibanez-Diaz

Music: Marc Parazon

Producers: Philippe Coeytaux, Nicolas Wadimoff Production: Akka Films in co-production with: Cactus Docs, RTS - Radio Télévision Suisse World sales: Lightdox

Language: Spanish lightdox.com/radio-silence

Carmen Aristegui,

Radiograph of a Family

dir. Firouzeh Khosrovani NORWAY, IRAN, SWITZERLAND / 2020 / 80’

My mother married my father’s photograph in Tehran. He was studying radiology in Switzerland, and for my mother to come and live with him, marriage was obligatory. For my mother, with her religious background, li ving in Europe was a challenge. Sin was everywhere. My father came from a liberal and secular family. He was a lover of culture, fine arts, and classi cal music. My mother never understood how he could treasure a painting depicting nude bodies. After I was born, we moved from Switzerland back to Tehran. Shortly after, the Revolution happened and changed everything upside down. My mother found a new identity, an important space for herself: She became a religious activist, school principal, and did military training. My father sat quietly in his favourite chair at home and listened to Bach. In our house, there was no more card playing or red wine. My mother’s prayer mat, and my prayer mat, were placed next to each other in the living room, by the window. Photographs of women without hijab were ripped apart. My mother censored the past – while my father dreamt of a different future. I was torn between my two parents. Our family was split. For a little girl, it was difficult and painful. As my identity developed, I carried both of them inside me. I still do, to this day. I am the result of Iran’s struggle between tradition and modernization. My story is told through photographs, archive footage, letters and voices. Our home in Tehran becomes a metaphor of the shifts in our family, hence in modern Iranian society. 23.10 11:15 Kinoteka 28.10 18:30 Kino Muranów

CREDITS

Director: Firouzeh Khosrovani

Screenplay: Firouzeh Khosrovani

Cinematography: Mohammad Reza Jahanpanah

Editing: Farahnaz Sharifi, Rainer M. Trinkler

Sound: Ensieh Maleki, Hugo Ekornes

Music: Peyman Yazdanian

Producers: Fabien Olivier Greenberg, Bård Kjøge Rønning

Production: Antipode Films in co-production with: Rainy Pictures , Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion, Storyline World sales: Taskovski Films

Language: Farsi, French www.taskovskifilms.com/film/radiograph-of-a-family

Remembrance of a Stranger

dir.

Helena Oborska POLAND / 2020 / 3’

22.10 18:15 Kinoteka 23.10 16:00 Elektronik 28.10 20:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Helena Oborska

Screenplay: Helena Oborska (based on the poem “Remembrance of a Stranger” by Roman Honet)

Featuring: Dominika Krysztoforska Cinematography: Aleksander Górski

Editing: Helena Oborska Sound: Justyna Popiel Music: Grzegorz Łapicki

Producer: Agata Golańska Production: Lodz Film School World sales: Studio Filmowe Indeks, Lodz Film School

Language: English

A visual interpretation of Roman Honet’s poem „Remembrance of a Stranger”. A mature woman is trying to recall her past to discover who she once was. A study of the body’s memory.

“To go on a sarha was to roam freely, at will, without restraint… The verb form of the word means to let the cattle out to pasture early in the morning, leaving them to wander and graze at liberty The commonly used noun sarha is a colloquial corruption of the classical word. A man going on a sarha wan ders aimlessly, not restricted by time and place, going where his spirit takes him to nourish his soul and rejuvenate himself. But not any excursion would qualify as a sarha. Going on a sarha implies letting go. It is a drug-free high, Palestinian style.”

Raja Shehadeh “Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape”

The Middle East, Palestine, the Holy Land - for the Polish artists Jaśmina Wójcik and Kuba Wróblewski, these are intense and mystical places. They wanted to share this experience with their little daughters. The two sisters observe Palestine without prejudice, with childlike curiosity and openness. They speak straightforwardly about the conflict they were directly confron ted with. They build their own worlds, they stop and contemplate a nature that is so different from the one they know. The parents-artists accompany them on this adventure, trying to see the world through their daughters’ eyes. The journey continues to resonate even when they return to Polandin conversations and memories.

The film was produced during an artist residency in Palestine as a part of the project “Everyday Forms of Resistance”, realized in collaboration between the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art and the city of Ramallah, with the support of the Capital City of Warsaw.

27.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Jaśmina Wójcik

Cinematography: Jakub Wróblewski

Editing: Jaśmina Wójcik

Sound: Jaśmina Wójcik, Krzysztof Sokół

Featuring: Zoja Wróblewska, Lea Wróblewska

Producers: Jaśmina Wójcik, Jakub Wróblewski

Production: Jaśmina Wójcik, Jakub Wróblewski

World sales: Jaśmina Wójcik, Jakub Wróblewski

Language: Polish

www.taskovskifilms.com/film/radiograph-of-a-family

Seyran Ateş: Sex, Revolution and Islam

dir. Nefise Özkal Lorentzen NORWAY / 2021 / 81’

In the 1960’s, the hippies championed the idea of a sexual revolution. They had neither Fatwas nor bodyguards. In 2019, Seyran Ateş, a Turkish-German lawyer, feminist, and female imam in Berlin, says Islam needs a sexual revo lution. She has two Fatwas and five bodyguards. Ateş has been shot at and received numerous death threats, but believes the only way to fight aga inst radical Islam is through Islam. Which is why, in her liberal mosque, there is no gender segregation or exclusion based on sexual orientation. This is the story of Seyran’s personal and ideological fight for the modernization of Islam. Her quest for a change takes her on a journey around the world, meeting with different people connected through faith, from sex workers in a German brothel to Uyghur LGBTQ youth and traditional female imams in China. It is also a journey through Seyran’s life, from her humble beginnings as a Muslim girl in Turkey’s slums to a female leader daring to challenge her own religion. Seyran rebels against extremism and hate in the name of peace and love.

24.10 16:00 Kinoteka 25.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Nefise Özkal Lorentzen

Screenplay: Nefise Özkal Lorentzen

Cinematography: Anders Hoft Editing: Morten Haslerud Sound: Andreu Jacob Music: Simon M. Valentine

Producer: Jørgen Lorentzen Production: Integral Film AS World sales: DR Sales

Language: German, English www.integralfilm.com/project/seyran-ates-sex-revolution-and-islam-2

Storm dir.

Moog

From the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Mediterranean, the director meets the women whose faces and voices bear witness to the loss of the loved ones and ruined hopes. The mourning and hopeless waiting for the bodies find in the incessant movement of the waves a dimension of painful meditation. 23.10 11:30 Kinoteka 23.10 16:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Anaïs Moog Screenplay: Anaïs Moog Cinematography: Anaïs Moog Editing: Pierre Schlesser Sound: Ahmed Maalaoui, Björn Cornellius, Philippe Ciompi Producer: Gabriela Bussmann Production: GoldenEggProduction in co-production with: HEAD – Genève World sales: GoldenEggProduction Language: Tunisian Arabic www.goldeneggproduction.ch/portfolio-item/silent-storm/#tab-id-2

Sisters with Transistors

dir.

Lisa Rovner UK / 2020 / 84’

“Sisters with Transistors” is the remarkable untold story of electronic music’s female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produce and listen to music today. The film maps a new history of electronic music through the visionary women whose radical experimentations with machines redefined the boundaries of music, including Clara Rockmore, Daphne Oram, Bebe Barron, Pauline Oliveros, Delia Derbyshire, Maryanne Amacher, Eliane Radigue, Suzanne Ciani, and Laurie Spiegel. With Laurie Anderson as the narrator, we embark on a fascinating journey through the evolution of electronic music. “Sisters with Transistors” is more than just the history of a music genre: it’s the story of how we hear and the critical but little-known role female pioneers play in that story.

23.10 15:00 Kinoteka 24.10 20:30 Kinoteka 26.10 20:45 Elektronik

CREDITS

Director: Lisa Rovner

Screenplay: Lisa Rovner

Editing: Michael Aaglund, Mariko Montpetit, Kara Blake Sound: Marta Salogni

Narrator: Laurie Anderson

Producer: Anna Lena Vaney

Production: Anna Lena Films World sales: Monoduo Films (Ben Bessauer)

Language: English, French

www.sisterswithtransistors.com

Stateless dir. Michèle Stephenson USA, CANADA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, HAITI / 2020 / 97’

In 1937, tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were exterminated by the Dominican army, based on anti-black hatred fomented by the Dominican government. Fast-forward to 2013, the Dominican Repu blic’s Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, retroactive to 1929. The ruling rendered more than 200,000 people state less, without nationality, identity or a homeland. In this dangerous climate, a young attorney named Rosa Iris mounts a grassroots campaign, challen ging electoral corruption and advocating for social justice. Director Michèle Stephenson traces the complex tributaries of history and present-day politics, as state-sanctioned racism seeps into mundane offices, living room meetings, and street protests. Filmed with a chiaroscuro effect and richly imbued with elements of magical realism, “Stateless” combines gritty hidden-camera footage with the legend of a young woman fleeing brutal violence to flip the narrative axis, revealing the depths of institutionalized oppression.

23.10 18:00 Kinoteka

25.10 20:45 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Michèle Stephenson

Screenplay: Michèle Stephenson

Cinematography: Alfredo Alcántara, Tito Rodriguez, Naiti Gámez, Nadia Hallgren, Jaime Guerra, Pedro Arnau Bros Santana

Editing: Sophie Farkas-Bolla

Sound: Ryan Birnberg, Chris Guglick, Matt McKenzie Music: Ben Fox

Producers: Jennifer Holness, Lea Marin, Michèle Stephenson

Production: Hispaniola Productions in co-production with: National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

World sales: National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

Language: Spanish, Haitian Creole www.nfb.ca/film/stateless

STAY TOUCH dir. Monika Cyprian POLAND / 2020 / 4’

Monika walks her father to the hospital. She doesn’t know yet that this is the final touch she’s sharing with him. His hospitalization coincides with her work on the project “STAY TOUCH”, which explores the lack of touch during the lockdown. The only way she’s able to interact with her father and execute the project is via video calls, which she records. Through this virtual connection she gets to know many intimate stories of people who share their experiences of feeling touch. When her father dies in the hospital, contactless, she conti nues her project. She records her own video calls and captures her own body. More people participate in the project. They face all aspects of touch during the pandemic; isolation. Monika becomes part of the picture she created with participants of “STAY TOUCH”. She has to confront the objective of her own project in the most vulnerable and irreversible way - losing her father’s touch once and for all. She attempts to make physical contact with him and to so mehow find a way to feel his presence.

25.10 18:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Monika Cyprian

Screenplay: Monika Cyprian

Cinematography: Monika Cyprian

Editing: Krzysztof Fischer

Sound: Krzysztof Fischer

Producers: Magda Betlejewska, Piotr Fryta Kornobis

Production: MOON Films Sp. z o.o.

World sales: Monika Cyprian

Language: Polish, English www.monikacyprian.com

Stolen Fish

dir. Gosia Juszczak UK, POLAND, SPAIN / 2020 / 30’

In Gambia, the smallest country of mainland Africa, fish are now being powdered up by Chinese corporations and exported to Europe and China to feed animals in industrial farming. As a result, Gambians are being deprived of their primary source of protein, overfishing is depleting marine ecosystems. The film follows Abou, Mariama and Paul, three Gambians who share intimate stories of the daily struggle, anger, hope and longing for their loved ones. For some, migration might be the only way out. 26.10 18:30 Elektronik

CREDITS

Director: Gosia Juszczak

Screenplay: Gosia Juszczak

Cinematography: Filip Drożdż

Editing: Adriana F. Castellanos

Sound: Igor Kłaczyński, Dariusz Wancerz Music: ST Gambian Dream

Producers: Aleksandra Leszczyńska, Emilia Pluskota

Production: Minority Rights Group International, Gosia Juszczak in co-production with: Compassion in World Farming, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Oficina de Enlace Madrid

World sales: Gosia Juszczak, Minority Rights Group International

Language: English, Mandinka, Wolof

Strona: www.facebook.com/stolenfishdocumentary

Strong sisters told the brothers Liliana Zeic (formerly Liliana Piskorska)

POLAND / 2019 / 30’

A poetic manifesto evoking other lesbian and queer statements, by Radicallesbians (The Woman Identified Woman, 1970), The Lesbian Avengers (Dyke Manifesto, 1992) and Queer Nation (The Queer Nation Manifesto, 1990). Translated and modified by the artist, they create a collage immersing the experiences articulated in it in the contemporary Polish reality. Showing how the heterosexual privilege works, the artist encourages us to reflect on our own position in the world of patriarchal domination and heterosexual standards. The work is also a call for compassion, solidarity and attention to others. “Strong sisters told the brothers” was created in cooperation with the Municipal Gallery Arsenał.

24.10 15:45 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Liliana Zeic (formerly Liliana Piskorska) Screenplay: Liliana Zeic (formerly Liliana Piskorska)

Cinematography: Liliana Zeic (formerly Liliana Piskorska)

Editing: Liliana Zeic (formerly Liliana Piskorska) Sound: Liliana Zeic (formerly Liliana Piskorska), voice: Iza Moczarna-Pasiek, so und postproduction: Paweł Rychert

Producer: Liliana Zeic (formerly Liliana Piskorska) Production: Liliana Zeic (formerly Liliana Piskorska) World sales: Liliana Zeic (formerly Liliana Piskorska)

Language: Polish

www.lilianapiskorska.com/pl/praca/silne-siostry-powiedzialy-braciom

Such a Beautiful Town dir. Marta Koch POLAND /

2019 / 8’

Morning. A woman wakes up, goes to the window and, to her surprise, notices her boyfriend kissing another woman on the street. Disoriented, she runs out of the apartment to confront him, but the man is not there anymore. In order to find him, she embarks on a lonely journey throughout the city, which with each subsequent street becomes more stifling and unsym pathetic. The streets tighten, the people she passes seem to have hostile intentions towards her. Terrified, she watches as the world she knew changes, and more dangers lurk around every other corner. A lonely journey ends up bringing tragic consequences. The woman returns to her apartment, aware that nothing will be the same as before.

22.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Marta Koch

Screenplay: Marta Koch

Animation: Marta Koch

Editing: Sabina Filipowicz, Marta Koch

Sound: Teoniki Rożynek, Marta Koch Music: Teoniki Rożynek

Producer: Agata Golańska

Production: Lodz Film School

World sales: Studio Filmowe Indeks, Lodz Film School

Language: Polish www.sp.kff.com.pl/films/takie-piekne-miasto

The Balcony and Our Dreams dir. Aylin Kuryel TURKEY

/ 2020 / 14’

“The Balcony and Our Dreams” offers a selection of dreams that are dre amt during the coronavirus outbreak. The longings, worries and desires that have been quarantined in the depths of the mind come to the surface and interfuse with sounds, music, applause and protests from the streets. Dreams permeate reality, and reality pervades dreams.

25.10 18:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Aylin Kuryel

Cinematography: Aylin Kuryel

Editing: Aylin Kuryel Sound: Fırat Yücel

Producer: Aylin Kuryel

Production: Aylin Kuryel World sales: Aylin Kuryel

Language: Turkish

The Calm After the Storm

dir. Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo COLOMBIA / 2020 / 72’

After several years in Buenos Aires, Mercedes returns to Medellín to work with her father on his new film “The Animal’s Wife”. There she learns the contra dicting natures of her father, a famous film director trying to make a genre film in a country dominated by violence. She also reconnects with the past through her family archive, created not only by the home videos made by her father, but also by the diary her mother wrote for her while being pregnant and awaiting her birth. Both intimate archives let us see the enormous space that separates the experience of motherhood and fatherhood in a Colombian family. Will these images manage to compose the history of a family or will they only be the proof of what was not said? And will Mercedes be able to find her own beginning? 23.10 11:45 Kino Muranów 26.10 18:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo

Screenplay: Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo

Cinematography: Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo, Mauricio Reyes Serrano, Alejan dra León

Editing: Rodrigo Traverso, Florencia Gómez García Sound: Marcos Canosa Music: Matías Gowland

Producers: Jerónimo Atehortúa Arteaga, Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo Production: Invasión Cine World sales: FilmsToFestivals

Language: Spanish www.blog.filmstofestivals.com/cecddll-4846

The Case You

dir. Alison Kuhn GERMANY / 2020 / 80’

I invited five women to spend several days with our team in a theater hall. Within this protected space, we try to figure out what connects them. They are in their 20s, actresses and four years ago they participated in the same audition, in which they experienced systematic abuse of sexual and violent nature, as did hundreds of others. I was one of the contenders as well. Like many of my colleagues, I wanted to suppress this day as quickly as possible. But since the director continued his abuse by using the audition material to edit a whole new movie, there is currently a legal battle between the pro duction company and the actresses taking place. Not much of it has yet reached the public. Today, I myself study directing and explore with the women in “The Case You”, what occurred back then, how it was possible for it to even happen and what it now means for our lives and our work.

23.10 15:30 Kino Muranów 24.10 13:30 Elektronik 26.10 18:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Alison Kuhn

Cinematography: Lenn Lamster

Editing: Christian Zipfel

Sound: Larissa Kischk, Elisabeth Sommer

Music: Dascha Dauenhauer

Producer: Luis Morat

Production: Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF World sales: Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF

Language: German www.weronikawysocka.com

The Fear

dir. Pawlina Carlucci

POLAND / 2020 / 28’

Sforza

Witnesses of the crimes that took place in the post-war period, living in a sen se of fear and shame, after more than 70 years decide to break the silence and tell about what they saw.

“The Fear” is a story about the social memory of the murders that took place after World War II in the Dębrzyn forest in the Subcarpathian region. Many people then returned from distant corners of the world, not expecting that they would be attacked by bandits close to their home. Thrown from the tra in, robbed and finally killed, they increased the number of people allegedly missing during the war. The inhabitants of the nearby towns knew about what was going on in the forest. However, they did not intervene because, as they say themselves, „they lived under fear”.

27.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Pawlina Carlucci Sforza

Screenplay: Magdalena Lubańska, Pawlina Carlucci Sforza

Cinematography: Tomasz Woźniczka, Nicolas Villegas, Pawlina Carlucci Sforza

Editing: Ilona Urbańska-Grzyb, Pawlina Carlucci Sforza

Sound: Katarzyna Szczerba, Sebastian Witkowski

Music: Jakub Szafrański, Pawlina Carlucci Sforza

Producers: Ewa Jastrzębska, Jerzy Kapuściński

Production: Munk Studio Polish Filmmakers Association, Agresywna Banda, Rentcam, Akjos Media, New Wave Film

World sales: Munk Studio Polish Filmmakers Association

Language: Polish www.studiomunka.pl

The Garden Agnieszka Polska POLAND / 2010 / 11’

The narrator of the film is an artist who emigrated from Poland to Sweden, left all his sketches in the country, and took up gardening in his new homeland. The story recalled by Agnieszka Polska resembles the biography of Paweł Freisler, an artist active in the 1960s and 1970s in the neo-avant-garde environ ment, who left for Scandinavia in 1976 and disappeared from the Polish art scene. Polska pays a hypothetical visit to Freisler’s Swedish garden and shows how an artist, known for storytelling around his own performances, could build a narrative about his disappearance.

24.10 15:45 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Agnieszka Polska Screenplay: Agnieszka Polska Cinematography: Agnieszka Polska Editing: Agnieszka Polska

The Hero’s Journey to the Third Pole

-

A

Bipolar

Musical Documentary with Elephants

dir. Anní Ólafsdóttir, Andri Snær Magnason ICELAND / 2020 / 75’

Part road movie, part musical, part serious inquiry into the caverns of the mind, “The Hero’s Journey to the Third Pole - A Bipolar Musical Documentary with Elephants” is at once an artful, sensitive and amusing examination of mental health, told through an unexpected story of friendship. The film follows Anna Tara Edwards, an Icelander raised in Nepal, and legendary musician Högni Egilsson, as they journey to Anna’s childhood home in the mountain jungles to explore the afflictions and superpowers that come with bipolar disorder. Delving into their respective pasts through textured archival footage and home videos, the narrative follows their present day quest to raise awareness abo ut the disease and come to terms with the impact it’s had on their own lives.

23.10 20:45 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Directors: Anní Ólafsdóttir, Andri Snær Magnason

Screenplay: Anní Ólafsdóttir, Andri Snær Magnason

Cinematography: Anní Ólafsdóttir, Eiríkur Ingi Böðvarsson

Editing: Eva Lind Höskuldsdóttir, Anní Ólafsdóttir, Davíð Alexander Corn Sound: Huldar Freyr Arnarson Music: Högni Egilsson

Producers: Andri Snær Magnason, Halldóra Þorláksdóttir, Hlín Jóhannesdóttir, Sigurður Palmason

Production: Elsku Rut, Ursus Parvus, Ground Control Productions, Lokaútgáfan World sales: Elsku Rut

Language: Icelandic www.facebook.com/elskurut

The Little Death

dir. Annie Gisler

SWITZERLAND / 2018 / 58’

“The Little Death” is a documentary film about the female orgasm. Wo men from various ages, experiences and sexual preferences talk about their orgasms in all sincerity. Poetical, abstract and metaphorical images take us into the heart of their sensations. Speaking about orgasm, the protagonists talk about their desires, their sexuality. With sensibility, poetry and humor, the film takes us in the intimacy of women. Far away from pornography, perfor mance’s cult or excessive erotic. The film is a collective adventure, driven by a common will to break some taboos that still weigh on female sexuality. “The Little Death” is a dialogue between women, for women. And for men.

23.10 18:00 Kino Muranów 24.10 20:15 Kinoteka 27.10 20:45 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Annie Gisler

Screenplay: Annie Gisler

Cinematography: Géraldine Zosso

Editing: Valérie Anex

Sound: Julian Joseph, Nora Longatti

Music: Benoît Gisler

Producers: Mark Olexa, Dunja Keller, Francesca Scalisi Production: DOK MOBILE World sales: DOK MOBILE

Language: French, English www.dokmobile.ch/en/la-petite-mort

The Second Wave

dir. Maria Stoianova UKRAINE / 2020 / 5’

Our future comes now and in the next second - like waves; while photography stays at the depth where the wave no longer moves the water particles. This depth is equal to about one half the distance between me and my grandfather. The distance between us is called a wavelength.

23.10 13:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Maria Stoianova

Screenplay: Maria Stoianova

Cinematography: Maria Stoianova, Isidore Mankofsky

Editing: Maria Stoianova

Sound: Maria Stoianova

Producer: Maria Stoianova

Production: Maria Stoianova World sales: Maria Stoianova

Language: Ukrainian, English, Russian

The Wedding Cake

dir. Monica Mazzitelli SWEDEN / 2020 / 4’

A young woman is forced to become a prostitute in order to settle her exhusband’s debts. Her destiny is narrated through Playmobil figurines and a wedding cake that disappears along with the woman’s illusions.

25.10 18:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Monica Mazzitelli

Screenplay: Monica Mazzitelli

Cinematography: Mikael Moiner

Editing: Mikael Moiner Sound: Mikael Moiner Music: Veli-Matti O Äijälä

Producer: Monica Mazzitelli

Production: Monica Mazzitelli World sales: Monica Mazzitelli

Language: English www.monicamazzitelli.net/en

Thermoplastische Elastomere dir. Karola Pfaffinger GERMANY / 2019 / 7’

The film is about a woman’s everyday life in a bizarre workplace. It deals with the relationship between human and object and takes up topics of materiali ty, sexuality and economic success.

25.10 18:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Karola Pfaffinger

Screenplay: Karola Pfaffinger

Cinematography: Karola Pfaffinger

Editing: Karola Pfaffinger

Sound: Lukas Brandes, Melina Stephan

Producer: Karola Pfaffinger

Production: Karola Pfaffinger World sales: Karola Pfaffinger

Language: German

They Call Me Babu

dir. Sandra Beerends NETHERLANDS / 2019 / 80’

Alima worked for a Dutch family as their babu—nanny—in the former Dutch East Indies. A young woman’s voice tells her story of how she came to work for the family, taking care of their baby Jantje. She accompanies them for a short stay in the Netherlands. Upon her return, she lives through Japane se occupation (during which the Dutch family is put in internment camps), and the battle for Indonesia’s independence. Throughout these years, Alima is devoted to the child, but at the same time she’s loyal to her lover Riboet, who’s an independence fighter. Told from Alima’s perspective, the film is more than an account of changing relationships in Indonesia: first and foremost, it’s about Alima’s development as an individual, breaking free of social restrictions to become an independent woman. Using unique, never-before-seen images from vario us archives in the Netherlands and Japan, it tells a universal story about the empowerment of women. 24.10 14:15 Kinoteka 25.10 18:30 Kino Muranów 28.10 18:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Sandra Beerends

Screenplay: Sandra Beerends

Editing: Ruben van der Hammen NCE Sound: Mark Glynne Music: Alex Simu

Producer: Pieter van Huijstee

Production: Pieter van Huystee Film World sales: Pieter van Huystee Film

Language: Indonesian www.theycallmebabu.com

Two Minutes to Midnight

dir. Yael Bartana GERMANY, NETHERLANDS / 2021 / 48’

A group of actors gather on a stage, ready for their performance. They are playing the all-female government of an imaginary nation. In light of the looming threat posed by an enemy country which is increasing its nuclear stockpiles, the government assembles in its Peace Room—so named as an inversion of Dr. Strangelove’s War Room, because here peace is preferable to war. In deciding how to respond, and in considering whether to proceed with their plans for unilateral disarmament, the government consults with female experts—real-life specialists, defence advisers, soldiers, lawyers, peace activists, humanitarians and politicians—who join the actors on stage. As the women exchange ideas about war, security, and inequality, their discussion ranges across the global emergencies of our male-dominated reality, with climate change, toxic masculinity and the nuclear arms race rising to the fore. As they strive to reimagine international gender paradigms, tensions escalate with the enemy nation—the country’s leader is a man obsessed with the size of his rocket, and he seems determined to prove to the world that his big red button really does work.

“Two Minutes to Midnight” is the final stage of a four year transdisciplina ry series by Yael Bartana. Incorporating footage recorded at experimental public performances in Aarhus, Berlin and Philadelphia, it presents a filmic synthesis of the series’ ideas, images and actions. By placing real-life participants within a fictional environment, and mixing scripted material with improvised discussions, the project explores what would happen if countries around the world were governed by women. Foreshadowing the real-life study that COVID-19 provided for this inquiry, the work examines the impact that female-led governments would have on the way that international crises are resolved, seeking to answer the ever-so pertinent question that forms the title of Bartana’s series: ‘What if Women Ruled the World?’ 22.10 18:45 Kinoteka 24.10 20:30 Kino Muranów 28.10 18:00 Kinoteka CREDITS

Director: Yael Bartana

Screenplay: Yael Bartana, Alex Barrett, Mille Haynes, Itamar Gov Cinematography: Itai Neeman Editing: Yael Bartana Sound: Daniel Meir

Producers: Yael Bartana, Naama Pyritz Production: Ingenue Productions, My-i Productions World sales: Studio Yael Bartana Language: English www.yaelbartana.com

Video Blues

dir. Emma Tusell SPAIN / 2019 / 74’

Suggestive and mysterious images recorded with a domestic camera in the late 1980s. Two voices, one female and the other male, argue about their meaning and do not seem to agree. Emma reviews her family history to try to piece together the lives that are still a mystery to her. In this review she will confront the ghosts of her past and make the viewer a voyeur accomplice in her intimacy. But... who is that voice that confronts her and why will it end up being so important in this story? 24.10 11:45 Kino Muranów 28.10 20:45 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Emma Tusell

Screenplay: Emma Tusell, Laura Sipán

Cinematography: Javier Cerdá

Editing: Juan Barrero, Emma Tusell Sound: José Tomé Producers: Félix Tusell Sánchez, Carmela Martínez Production: Estela Films World sales: Agencia Freak

Language: Spanish www.agenciafreak.com

Wake Up on Mars dir. Dea Gjinovci SWITZERLAND, FRANCE

Furkan, the youngest

a

Sweden, attempts to come to terms with the mysterious illness of his two sisters. Ibadeta and Djeneta have been in a coma-like state for several years, victims of what has been named the resignation syndrome. Traumatized by the thought of being sent back to Kosovo, their homeland, their minds and bodies have suddenly gone to sleep. In central Sweden, his family attempts to rebuild a normal life, but so far their asylum applications have been refused one after the other. Furkan tries to escape his reality by building his own spaceship to fulfil his dream: to go live on Mars and save his two sisters. “Wake Up on Mars” is a story of children trying to deal with the trauma inflicted on them by indifferent and cruel state bureaucracies.

26.10 18:15 Kino Muranów 27.10 18:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Dea Gjinovci

Screenplay: Dea Gjinovci

Cinematography: Dea Gjinovci

Editing: Catherine Birukoff

Sound: Quentin Coulon, Amélie Canini, Philippe Ciompi

Music: Gael Kyriakidis and Pavillon - Fabio Poujouly & Jeremy Calame

Producers: Britta Rindelaub, Jasmin Basic, Sophie Faudel, Dea Gjinovci, Heidi Fleisher

Production: Alva Film Production, Mélisande Films in co-production with: RTS - Radio Télévision Suisse in association with: Amok Films World sales: CAT&Docs

Language: Albanian, Swedish

www.catndocs.com

member of

Roma family living in

Walchensee Forever

dir.

Janna

Ji Wonders GERMANY / 2020 / 110’

In her documentary family saga “Walchensee Forever”, director Janna Ji Won ders embarks on a voyage of discovery spanning four generations of women over a century. In order to uncover the secrets and her role in the genera tion chain, she leads us from the family café at the Bavarian Lake Walchensee via Mexico to San Francisco during the “Summer of Love”, to Indian ashrams, a German commune, and back again.

23.10 20:30 Kinoteka 26.10 20:45 Kino Muranów

CREDITS

Director: Janna Ji Wonders

Screenplay: Janna Ji Wonders, Nico Woche

Cinematography: Janna Ji Wonders, Sven Zellner, Anna Werner Editing: Anja Pohl

Sound: Janna Ji Wonders, Sven Zellner

Music: Markus Acher, Cico Beck

Producers: Katharina Bergfeld, Martin Heisler, Nadja Smith

Production: Flare Film in co-production with: BR - Bayerischer Rundfunk World sales: Deckert Distribution

Language: German, English

www.deckert-distribution.com/film-catalogue/walchensee-forever

We Have One Heart dir. Katarzyna Warzecha POLAND

/ 2020 / 11’

After his mother dies, Adam comes across some letters exchanged years ago between his Polish mother and his father, a Kurd living in Iraq. For Adam, this is an opportunity to learn more about the father he has never met. The juxtaposition of animated drawings and archival material takes us for ty years back into the past and enables us not only to feel the emotions lin king the lovers living in different parts of the world, but also to uncover an extraordinary family secret.

23.10 13:15 Kinoteka 24.10 13:00 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Katarzyna Warzecha Screenplay: Katarzyna Warzecha Cinematography: Grzegorz Hartfiel

Editing: Piotr Kremky Sound: Jakub Jerszyński Music: Adam Witkowski Animation: Yellow Tapir Studio Producers: Ewa Jastrzębska, Jerzy Kapuściński, Stanisław Zaborowski, Daria Maślona

Production: Munk Studio Polish Filmmakers Association, Silver Frame, Pome rania Film World sales: Munk Studio Polish Filmmakers Association

Language: Polish, English www.studiomunka.pl

We hope you won’t need to come back

dir. Anastazja Naumenko POLAND / 2020 / 9’

A young girl has immigrated. Having to function in a new environment is slowly transforming into a routine, and herself, into a modern Frankenstein’s creation. The new approach and behaviour no longer match the old habits and patrimonial stereotypes. The decision to reunite with her family and to bring back the feeling of comfort become a turning point and reveal the process which modern immigrants experience. 23.10 11:30 Kinoteka 27.10 18:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Anastazja Naumenko

Screenplay: Anastazja Naumenko Animation: Anastazja Naumenko Editing: Anastazja Naumenko Sound: Jakub Młynek Music: GENTS

Producer: Robert Sowa Production: Animation Film Studio in Krakow, Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts World sales: KFF Sales & Promotion

Language: no dialogue www.film.asp.krakow.pl

Welcome to a Bright White Limbo

dir. Cara Holmes IRELAND / 2019 / 11’

“Welcome To A Bright White Limbo” is an honest and stimulating account of dance theatre which pushes boundaries, visually and aurally while revealing the raw energy, talent and creative ability of one of the best dance artists in Ireland today, Oona Doherty. Combining documentary and dance performan ce, this visually arresting film dives into the mind and creative process of Oona Doherty’s award winning dance show “Hope Hunt”. Using interviews and a dance performance in the streets of Belfast, the film plays with dichotomies; a sense of home, gender, dance, redemption and how to be in the world. 23.10 16:00 Elektronik 28.10 20:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Cara Holmes

Screenplay: Cara Holmes

Featuring: Oona Doherty Cinematography: Luca Truffarelli

Editing: Mick Mahon Sound: Caimin Agnew, Cara Holmes Music: DIE HEXEN

Producer: Zlata Filipović

Production: Invisible Thread Films World sales: Invisible Thread Films

Language: English www.invisiblethreadfilms.com

Writing With Fire

dir. Rintu

Thomas, Sushmit

INDIA / 2021 / 93’

Ghosh

In a cluttered news landscape dominated by men, emerges India’s only new spaper run by Dalit (‘low caste’) women. Armed with smartphones, Chief Re porter Meera and her journalists break traditions, be it on the frontlines of In dia’s biggest issues or within the confines of their homes, redefining what it means to be powerful.

23.10 20:30 Kinoteka

27.10 18:45 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Directors: Rintu Thomas, Sushmit Ghosh

Cinematography: Sushmit Ghosh, Karan Thapliyal

Editing: Sushmit Ghosh, Rintu Thomas Sound: Susmit Bob Nath, Janne Laine Music: Tajdar Junaid

Producers: Rintu Thomas, Sushmit Ghosh, Tone Grøttjord, John Webster

Production: Black Ticket Films in co-production with: CompanySant & Usant, JW Documentaries

World sales: Autlook Filmsales

Language: Hindi www.autlookfilms.com

xABo: Father Boniecki

dir. Aleksandra Potoczek POLAND / 2020 / 73’

The film title refers to the initials used by Father Adam Boniecki to sign his articles in „Tygodnik Powszechny”. This weekly is the only place where he can publish after a ban was imposed on him by the Catholic Church leaders in Poland. Since then the priest has been even more active participating in over 200 meetings with his readers every year. The film is an intimate portrait of a man on the road. It shows a priest, aged 85, who can always find time for a meaningful conversation and, simultaneously, remains torn between his faith and concern about the condition of the contemporary Church, in particular in Poland. 24.10 13:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Aleksandra Potoczek

Screenplay: Aleksandra Potoczek Cinematography: Adam Palenta, Szymon Sinoff Editing: Marcin Sucharski Sound: Tomasz Kochan Music: Hania Rani

Producer: Aleksander Kardyś

Production: Fundacja Tygodnika Powszechnego in co-production with: Krakowskie Biuro Festiwalowe, Regionalny Fundusz Filmowy, TVN World sales: KFF Sales&Promotion

Language: Polish www.sp.kff.com.pl

Xeno

dir. Amy J. Gardner CANADA / 2021 / 4’

Xeno is the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchan ged between passing strangers—a flirtatious glance, a sympathetic nod, moments that are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that can alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone.

Special thanks to Films.Dance (@films.dance) and Jacob Jonas The Company (@jacobjonasthecompany).

23.10 16:00 Elektronik 28.10 20:30 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Amy J. Gardner

Choreographer: Diego Vega

Featuring: Natasha Patterson, Sabine Van Rensburg Cinematography: Kristof Brandl

Editing: Joy Isabella Brown

Music: Alice Phoebe Lou, Thor Rixon

Producers: Jill Wilson, Emma Rosenzweig-Bock, Mathieu Wothke

Production: Films.Dance / Jacob Jonas The Company World sales: Films.Dance / Jacob Jonas The Company

Language: no dialogue www.films.dance

youngvodka_ dir. Léa Hall

23.10 16:15 Kinoteka

CREDITS

Director: Léa Hall

Screenplay: Léa Hall

Cinematography: Robin Angst

Editing: Nefeli Chrysa Avgeris

Sound: Antonia Meile, Beni Mosele Music: Serafin Aebli

Producer: Edith Flückiger

Production: Bachelor Video, Lucerne School of Art and Design (HSLU Studienbereich Video)

World sales: Bachelor Video, Lucerne School of Art and Design (HSLU Studienbereich Video)

Language: Swissgerman, English

www.bavideo.blog/youngvodka

*Puts on a thong and fishnet tights* - click. 230 Likes. Like many other young women, Nicole presents herself lightly dressed and provocative on her Insta gram account. I asked myself: Why? Now I’m asking her.

Weronika Adamowska - programme, promotion, PR & marketing, strategic partnerships, financing, film licenses, coordination of film translations, coordination of print traffic

Katarzyna Korytowska - programme, accompanying events, education, crowdfunding

Maja Szydłowska - programme, administration

Aleksandra Mleczko - visual identification & promotional videos, illustrations & graphic design of the exhibition

“Pioneering Women in Film. Aiming for 50/50”

Bogna Stefańska - video artworks programme, co-curator of the exhibition “All Cloudy Except a Narrow Opening at the Bottom of the Sky”

Weronika Zalewska - video artworks programme, co-curator of the exhibition “All Cloudy Except a Narrow Opening at the Bottom of the Sky”

Hanna Mokijewska - social media

Emma Szumlas - social media

Marta Golba - industry events

Maja Rup - accompanying events - cooperation

Zofia Żmijewska - guest coordination

Sonia Le Pape - screening projections coordination

Jacqueline Horodyńska - festival centres & volunteers coordination, festival center in Kinoteka cinema

Adriana Rędzia - Q&A coordination

Elwira Paź - festival center in Muranów cinema

Aleksandra Chorążka - festival center in Elektronik cinema

Dominika Laszczyk - organization of festival centers - cooperation

Anna Włodarska - internet website coordination

Monika Talarczyk - author of the texts for the Polish part of the exhibition “Pioneering Women in Film. Aiming for 50/50”

Monika Matuszewska - production of the exhibition “Pioneering Women in Film. Aiming for 50/50”

Klara Cykorz - film synopses

Michał Matuszewski - film synopses

Michalina Augusiak - film synopses

Małgorzata Dera - film translation, translation of the texts of the exhibition “Pioneering Women in Film. Aiming for 50/50”

Magdalena Krajewska - film translation

Aleksandra Kostiuk -film translation

Aleksandra Stelmach - film translation

Aleksandra Wróblewska - film translation

Zuzanna Blahuszewska - film translation

Weronika Sowińska - film translation

Maja Zawierzeniec - film translation

Piotr Owczarczyk - film translation

Dariusz Stępniewski - film translation

Małgorzata Roszkowska - film translation

Monika Piechota - film translation

Julia Kozakiewicz - film translation

Yulia Krivich - author of the photograph used in the visual identification of HER Docs Film Festival 2021

Kaja Kusztra - visual identification of the Art section at HER Docs Film Festival 2021

Jakub Kaczmarek - law advisor

Jakub Wojtaszewski - audio technician

Good4Frame - production of the screening copies & subtitling

Onestage - online edition

I Do Art - realization of the exhibition “Pioneering Women in Film. Aiming at 50/50”

ALASTIR - accounting & bookkeeping services

We would like to thank all the supporters of HER Docs Film Festival, involved in its organization and those who contributed to the creation of the second edition of the festival. In particular, our thanks go to:

Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw

Ada Petriczko

Adam Trzopek

Adrianna Dobrzyńska

Agnieszka Arzt Agnieszka Iskra

Agnieszka Pac

Akademickie Biuro Karier

Aleksandra Krajewska

Aleksandra Nowak

Aleksandra Stelmach

Alka Nauman

Andrea Testa

Andrzej Wajda Centre For Film Culture (Centrum Kultury Filmowej im. Andrzeja Wajdy)

Anna Sańczuk

Anna Snopkowska

Anna Spisz

Anna Tatarska

Anna Walas

Anna Waszczuk

Anna Wiatrowska

Anna Więckowska

Antoni Michnik

Austrian Cultural Forum Warsaw

Barbara Orlicz-Szczypuła

Bartek Pulcyn

Basia Kerent

Beata Etienne

Beata Kwiatkowska

Bogna Świątkowska

Bratumiła Pettersson

Brigid O’Shea

Bureau Wallonie-Bruxelles à Varsovie Camera Femina

Codziennik Feministyczny Czasopismo EKRANy

Dagmara Molga

Damian Borowiec

Daniel Wojciechowski

Documentary Association of Europe

Dominika Hoyle

Edka Jarząb

Edyta Mietkowska

Elektronik cinema

Embassy of the Netherlands in Poland

Embassy of Norway in Poland

Embassy of Sweden in Poland Embassy of Switzerland in Poland

Ernestine Baig

Ewa Dyszlewicz

Ewa Ekwa

Ewa Salamon

Feliks Platowski

Filip Kijowski Filmawka Film School Lodz

Fundacja Nowej Kultury Bęc Zmiana Fundacja Tygodnika Powszechnego G’rls ROOM

Glissando Goethe-Institut Going.

Good4Frame

Hello Zdrowie

Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights Humanity in Action Poland

I Do Art

Iga Winczakiewicz

Ika Sienkiewicz-Nowacka

Institut français de Pologne à Varsovie (Instytut Francuski) International Film Festival Transatlantyk International Film Festival WATCH DOCS

Iwona Urawska

Jakub Gutek

Jakub Kaczmarek

Jakub Królikowski and the team of the Five Flavours Asian Film Festival Jakub Siedlecki

Jan Topolski

Jaśmina Wójcik

Joanna Kollbek

Joanna Łapińska

Joanna Mytkowska

Joanna Rożen-Wojciechowska

Jolanta Żukowska

Jolaś Anioł Juliusz Modelski

Justyna Sobotka Kaja Gołuchowska

Kamil Dąbrowa

Karina Gradowska-Karpińska Karolina Bordo

Karolina Fornal Karolina Plinta Kasia Kolman

Kasia Rodek

Katarzyna Szota KFF Sales & Promotion

Martin van Dijk

Kinoteka Multiplex Klara Bogusławska Klara Cykorz

KMAG

Krakow Film Festival

Krakow Film Foundation

Krzysztof Brzezowski

Kuba Wirkowski

Lithuanian Culture Institute Lithuanian Film Center

Maciej Reguła

Maciek Jarmoliński

Magazyn Kontakt

Magazyn SZUM

Magdalena Bury

Magdalena Krajewska

Magdalena Olczak

Magdalena Teper

Maja Głogowska

Magdalena Makarczuk-Strehlau

Małgorzata Dera

Małgorzata Karczewska

Małgorzata Mostek

Marcel Müller

Marcelina Tomczyk

María Vera

Marion Schmidt

Marlena Gabryszewska

Marta Bartkowska

Marta Bulińska

Marta Górczyńska Marta Konieczna

Matthias Dettling

Mazovia Warsaw Film Commission

Michalina Augusiak

Michał Chabiera

Michał Hudzikowski

Michał Modelski

Michał Opiłowski

Michał Sieciński

Mikołaj Komar

Milena Soporowska

Monika Matuszewska

Monika Talarczyk

Munk Studio (Studio Munka SFP)

Muranów cinema Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw Nika Mazek

Nowy Folder Nowy Świat Muzyki Ofeminin oko.PRESS

Onestage

Paulina Reiter

Paulina Trzeciak

Pismo. Magazyn opinii

Planeta

Platforma Medialna Anywhere Polish Docs

Vice-Rector prof. Prot Jarnuszkiewicz Przemysław Glajzner

Radio Kampus

Rasa Rimickaitė

Redakcja Szajn

Renata Prokurat

Rosine Mbakam

Sex Work Polska Society of Authors ZAiKS Studio Chmury

SWISS FILMS

Sylvain Vaucher

Sylwia Chutnik

Tadeusz Strączek

Taras Gembik

The Capital City of Warsaw - Department of Culture (Biuro Kultury m.st. Warszawy)

The Capital City of Warsaw - Department of Marketing (Biuro Marketingu m.st. Warszawy)

volunteers

Warsaw Jewish Film Festival

WIMIN

Wysokie Obcasy

Yulia Krivich

We would like to thank in particular the filmmakers and creators of the films presented at 2. HER Docs Film Festival - without you, this festival could not take place.